


The Parties Arc

by Maldoror_Chant



Series: Outlands [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Complete and utter bastardization of physics, Dimensional Magic, Fish out of Water, M/M, Mathematical Magic, cultures back in antiquity did not know about political correctness, history put through a blender, passing mention of underage sex in a cultural context
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-04-07 14:05:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14082573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maldoror_Chant/pseuds/Maldoror_Chant
Summary: Timestamps of Ryou and Darius's life in the Outlands as seen through the lens of five very different parties, while life, war and magical conflict rage around them.





	1. Victory Party

**Author's Note:**

> FOREWORD:  
> I have a love/hate relationship with this arc. There's a lot about it that I like, but the scope of what it has to cover, the style of certain chapters, and a timecrunch back when I initially started it, is what originally ended Outlands at Sons of the Path some 8 years ago. This arc is still not exactly what I wanted it to be, at least in my mind, and it may not read as smoothly as the first fic and its sequel arcs, but it should still be entertaining and move the plot forward. Besides, let's be real, Outlands is the story of a dimensional jumping Japanese businessman who runs cars into trashbots and hops into bed with a bastard prince from out of antiquity, it's not like I got Tolstoyesque standards to adhere to here :) The next two arcs after this one are more in my traditional style: no time-jumping slice-of-life timestamps, just regular stories along the lines of Sons of the Path. I find those easier to handle when all is said and done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, folks! The first new chapter. Though in fact this was written eons ago, and only polished a bit. I’m still working on some of the later chapters (I got kidnapped by a new fandom, but I am working on this too, I promise) but I should be able to put a new chapter out ever week or every other week, usually on Saturday.

Darius’s victory feast was Ryou’s first formal function in the Outlands and in Sura, a mere ten days after his arrival in the city. Assyrian etiquette was foreign enough at the best of times, so he went to the festivities determined to keep a low profile and not make any faux-pas. 

But the officer from Halicarnace really was insufferably rude.

"Hey Ghan! Why d’you always turn down my dice games? Bastards are supposed to be lucky!" Hyeronemon shouted from across the packed room (Hyeronemon the Halicarnacean, what a stupid mouthful, thought Ryou.) 

Darius just shrugged with the air of one who did not give a damn. It was probably all the answer the ape deserved. Ryou approved of such restraint. It was just...if Hyeronemon cracked one more joke along those lines-...Darius really did not care about his parentage, and as a rule his friends and his brother had no problems teasing him about it, but this was not teasing. Hyeronemon was a loudmouthed idiot who was spoiling for a fight. At a towering six foot for well over a hundred and fifty kilos, he had the frame for it. Most men in the Pariya regions did not top five foot six, making the Halicarnacean a giant by comparison. A really loud obnoxious one. 

The victory party was noisy and full of drunk army officers. Ryou had been given something to drink and then he’d retreated to the background from where he watched Darius, clearly in his element, salute allies and old comrades. But not everybody here was a friend...Peistrasos, Darius’s servant and quite the gossip for a burly ex-soldier, had told Ryou that Nineel the Tezalian had refused to attend this celebration on some flimsy excuse. It was rumored he'd been insulted by Darius questioning his handling of Sura's garrison. There were others too who did not like this illegitimate commander with his weird ideas about warfare that broke with tradition. Ryou spotted what he suspected were a few of those ill-wishers, a sullen group at the far table, lurking near the cheese wheels and huge flatbreads. 

Hyeronemon wasn't a part of that old-Assyrian clique, though. He was one of the Alliance officers whose troops had helped Sura get rid of the last of the Roman legions after Leyam had taken over command of the country a few years back. The big bear hadn’t left with the others once Sura was made safe; he’d married an Assyrian woman and made Sura his home. His current post was as an officer for a siege engine unit, unrelated to any partisanship in the ranks of the Sura homeguard. It wasn't clear what bone he had to pick with Darius. Maybe they had some bad blood between them, or maybe, from the jocular way Hyeronemon was looking for a fight, he just thought Darius needed a beatdown for some stupid reason that must seem blindingly obvious to a person from Halicarnace with the IQ of a billy goat and the manners to match.

"Though I don’t know _why_ they say bastards’re lucky", said Hyeronemon loudly. “When you’re born nothin’ but some woman’s son, the Fates decide that’s enough bad luck right there to last you? S’at it?”

Some of the men around him laughed, which was clearly going to egg him on. Partying Assyrians got righteously drunk, which a Japanese man like Ryou respected, but they got a little wild too, which was not quite so proper. Some of those who laughed were glancing at Darius to see if the jibe had hit home, and others were clearly waiting with some anticipation for the moment Darius would have to pick up the gauntlet and punch this ugly brute in the face. 

Ryou finished his wine and chewed on some tiny olives, half listening to Dionosydoros and his friends. Dionosydoros had spent most of the evening with these men; they were officers from Kalicee, heading a mercenary band hired by Assyria. They were talking about an old campaign they'd fought in together, going over all the ins and outs in terribly long details. Ryou kept his expression set to 'polite interest', but most of his attention was on the party, picking out similarities and contrasts between this victory celebration and similar revels after Ujie Standard & Trade's better business deals. 

The musicians nobody was listening to started a new song. Slaves appeared bearing yet more lambs on spits and other large dishes, despite the fact that it was obvious nobody was eating anymore, just drinking. People lounged on couches, some of them passed out. Others had company. From where he sat, Ryou could see one of those companions, a young fellow who would not be able to get so much as a light beer back in Japan, sitting to the left of an older soldier who had his arm looped around the young shoulders, a hand toying with a tunic fastener. _That_ would not be legal in Japan either, though the kid looked old enough to be in high school and would probably be doing it anyway. Just not flaunting it...Another big difference between this affair and a party back home was the absence of women, except for the four that'd been dancing earlier to some extremely lewd comments from the peanut gallery. Apparently most Assyrian or Greek parties, particularly a soldier's drinking affair like this, was considered to be a man's evening out. Curious, Ryou has asked several people about this and gotten a different answer each time as to why this was, from 'it's too crude for proper women to attend' to 'the boring tarts would get in the way of our fun' and every variant in between. 

Ryou stole a glance at his lover. Darius was reclining on a couch on the other side of Dio’s mock battle, now being reenacted with pieces of bread (cavalry units), pickled onions (infantry), lamb skewers (the four cannons that'd been used, to the pride of all who'd been there) and the bowl used to rinse one's fingers (the enemy high command). Darius had followed the lively discussion for awhile with the faint smile of a man who liked to see his friends enjoying themselves. Now he was looking out at the crowd, lifting his cup to salute old acquaintances or exchanging a few words with those who walked over to talk about new battle plans and old campaigns. Since neither he nor anybody else was paying Ryou any attention, Ryou redirected his people-watching back to his favorite subject. 

Darius, who usually wore either armor or the kind of clothes worn under armor, looked very different tonight. He was dressed in a short tunic and a longer fawn-colored overcoat, open down the front and belted with silk. His clothes were sown with embroidered decorations down the sleeves as well as on the front and sides, vibrant green silk and thick gold thread in geometric patterns. He was wearing a golden bracer on the upper part of his forearm, a golden torc around his neck embedded with multicolored pieces of stone, lapis and carnelian, and hoop earrings - to Ryou's surprise, not having noticed his lover's ears were pierced. Part of his dark hair had been gathered back into a knot wrapped in gold ribbon. Every time Ryou caught sight of him, an unworthy little part of his brain had to contemplate the effect if Darius went strolling into Ujiie S&T’s front lobby in that getup and asked for Ryou to be paged. Here, the effect was mitigated, since everybody else of Assyrian descent was dressed pretty much the same. But the eyes beneath the lines of khol applied by the slave who'd dressed him - Peistrasos had insisted upon that - were sharp and watchful as they studied the people around him, like a lion lounging in the shade but not losing one iota of the surrounding savannah. Ryou only got a few seconds to drink in the sight before, sure enough, his lover looked over his shoulder to see who was watching him. By then Ryou was once more immersed in the terribly interesting battle of somebody-or-other against the Kalicean’s First Army. An olive had just decimated a piece of bread and was heading towards a strategically important wine goblet. 

A slave appeared next to Ryou with a frothy pitcher extended, Ryou shook his head with a quick and automatic smile of thanks. This wasn’t one of the Noble Quarter slaves; the latter were used to just about anything, utterly blasé after years of dealing with Lord Ghan, his battlefield of a room, his soldiers and his dogs, whilst rubbing shoulders with Leyam's servants who got to see even more eccentric behavior. This young man, a flat-faced, warty specimen in his late teens who’d probably been shanghaied from the kitchen personnel to make up the staffing numbers, gave Ryou a startled and slightly nervous look as if suspecting some ulterior motive. He gave the guest a deep bow and beat a hasty retreat. Ryou stifled a sigh, keeping his features impassive, and brought his attention back once more to the battlefield. 

Dio, currently retelling his part in the skirmish, was dressed in his homeland's garb, more sober than Assyrian formal dress: a white tunic fastened at the shoulders with gold brooches, golden cords knotted around his head to keep his hair back, and a thick bracelet, booty from some campaign, on his wrist. It flashed in the light of the torches as Dio explained the cutting thrust he’d used on some enemy cavalryman. Ryou amused himself by a mental comparison with UST's tie-and-suited business exec recounting details of hostile takeovers. Dio was as exotic as you could get by comparison, and also very lightly dressed. Then again, the heat from the day was lingering in this room, battling the firepits for dominance. Ryou was sweating even though he was wearing much the same getup as Dio, clothes that had been provided by the Sura tailor who’d dressed him in Leyam’s quarters that first night. A kind of tunic/toga with brooches as fasteners, in an Assyrian color scheme of dark green and brown, with more decorations along the hem than the Ionian format. These were somewhat casual clothes, the ones he wore when he walked around the streets of Sura. Earlier in the evening, he'd been about to put on the only truly formal outfit he had when Peistrasos, moved by some foresight, appeared at his doorstep to 'help the noble lord dress'. Ryou had found it odd, Peistrasos not being known for overly zealous service. Something in the old soldier's eyes had suggested Ryou would be wise to listen, and he was glad he did. Though he was privileged to by special decree, it would have been a gaffe to wear royal purple when the guest of honor was not allowed to...

As it were, he fit right into the crowd, the only difference being the lack of plunder adorning his person. Ryou’s sole decoration was the bracer on his right arm. Maybe it made him look a little down at the heels, but Ryou preferred it that way. When he’d rejoined Darius outside his rooms on their way here, his lover had said Ryou looked nice in a sober kind of way, and that was the only opinion that mattered.

“Hey, did you guys hear this good one this guy from…from somewhere told me? They’ve got a saying in his town: “All dogs are bastards.” Dogs! Get it?! Ha ha ha hah!”

Dio and his friends went to crowd around another part of the battlefield on the floor, leaving Ryou on the margin of the group. Ryou got up, walked around them and sat down on the edge of Darius's seat. "Is that big man over there a friend of yours?" he asked, leaning forwards to speak to Darius privately. 

"No. But if you're wondering why I'm ignoring him, I simply choose battles that have meaning," Darius responded dryly. "And Hyeronemon, for all he's a pain in the ass, has a small claim on my patience as a friend of a friend of mine."

"Your friend could choose his friends better," muttered Ryou, alcohol loosening his tongue.

"My friend is dead, and can no longer choose his friends," Darius answered calmly. "Hyeronemon wasn't quite so bad in his younger days, though he and I were never close. I put up with his antics out of respect for he who is gone. Hyeronemon’s adjutant over there, his half-brother on his mother’s side, is considerably different in temperament, and he keeps an eye on him and stops him before he says something I would have to kill him for. I just think of it as a chance to practice my forbearance."

Darius had a lot of friends, dead or otherwise, so there was no reason for Ryou to jump to any conclusion. But something, a nuance in the way Darius said 'friend' perhaps, or the fact he was putting up with the loon, made Ryou wonder if this wasn't a significant friend. Hyeronemon, for all his juvenile behavior, was in his late thirties, so that might make it an _older_ significant friend- Ryou wondered where his mind was going with this. 

Ryou looked around, just in time to see the boor himself fall heavily onto a nearby couch, his long-suffering half-brother at his shoulder with the gloomy look of one who knew full well this was not a wise move. Their eyes met before Ryou could look away, and a thought process started its glacially slow path through Hyeronemon's brain. Damn. 

"Say, Ghan, whozat sitting beside you?" Hyeronemon said jocularly, sloshing drink on the floor as he jabbed a finger in Ryou’s direction. "I thought it was a boy."

The lighting, provided by torches, braziers and the firepit, was bad, but it wasn't _that_ bad. Ryou could have ignored the implied insult to his manhood, considering the source, but he wasn't the only one it'd been aimed at. And from the momentary frown that crossed Darius's features, its intended target had not appreciated it. Ryou felt a surge of warmth quite unlike himself (even if he was slightly inebriated by now) when he realized that Darius could shrug off insults flung at him, but did not like the same addressed to Ryou. 

"My friend is from a far off land," said Darius, swirling the beer in his heavy metal goblet. "They have different customs there, as we do in Sura where a man is at liberty to sit where he chooses without disparagement." There'd been a slight stress on the 'man'. So this gibbering boor had just suggested Ryou was on par with one of those awfully young men sharing the couches of other revelers. 

Hyeronemon laughed, a great booming noise. "Is that so? But the way I heard it, he was your booty at Essin."

"You heard wrong," said Darius, still not looking up as if attempting to give Hyeronemon a hint that this was not a good direction to go in. Further off, Dio had looked up from the condiment battle and was listening with a frown on his face. He got to his feet and sauntered over. The half-brother put a hand on Hyeronemon’s shoulder, but the big bear didn’t seem to notice.

"Well then all to the good. Does he understand our language?"

"Yes," said Ryou who had no intention of hiding behind Darius. 

"Oh, all to the good," Hyeronemon repeated. "No offense, stranger. Though you know what they say, if you lie down with dogs, you'll wake up with fleas!" And he laughed hugely at his own joke, a laughter that urged others to share it, including Ryou.

This guy...was an aggressive lout, but there wasn’t much meanness to him, not really. He was like a drunken and obnoxious bull in a china shop, but one that would not gore, only prod a bit and then sit back and laugh until he puked. Others of the same kind were giggling like apes behind him. And behind those tittering drunkards, and possibly egging them on, were the ones with the agenda, who were watching Darius and Ryou with amused smiles full of poison. Ryou, who was not looking for trouble, was not about to toss out any hasty words into this volatile atmosphere, so he just shrugged.

Hyeronemon laughed as if Ryou had given him an adequate comeback. "Come, let us drink together then! No, no, not like that," he added when Ryou curtly lifted his cup in salutation as he'd seen men do all night, "Ghan claims you to be a man, even if you're sitting at his side with a boy's beardless face, so you won't turn down a drink from a man's cup, will you?"

"Hyero, go drink on your own, Ryou has no interest in your games," Darius told him, at the same time as Garalgexes, one of his friends seated nearby, said pretty much the same thing. That just gave Hyeronemon fuel, and there was loud laughter as the 'man's cup' was produced. Ryou had spotted it on a pedestal earlier; it was a ewer of fine wood with gold pipings, the length of his hand and forearm, full of beer by the looks of it, in the rough shape of a crouching bull. The animal’s tail formed a handle on one end and the bull’s snout ended in a corked spout. To hold it up and drink from it, one had to hold it at arm's length. Hyeronemon did so one-handed, biceps bunching like coconuts as he uncorked the spout and aimed the jet of beer at his mouth (and chin and beard and chest). A slave with a pitcher stood poised nearby to fill it again once Hyeronemon had finished.

Of course Ryou would not be able to lift that with just one hand, must less drink out of it without showering in liquor. He wasn't even going to try. He had nothing to prove to the likes of Hyeronemon and his friends. Though he did want to refuse in a way that would not leave Darius to suffer more slings thrown his way. It was for this reason and this reason alone that Ryou said, "Oh, is that what that’s for? I thought I saw it used as a urinal earlier- but I must have been mistaken."

His last words were drowned in a geyser of beer barreling out of Hyeronemon's mouth.  
General laughter. Darius gave Ryou a dry look that said he knew full well that'd been deliberate, and that he was going to tell Ryou off for picking up the gauntlet tossed down by idiots once he'd finished enjoying the result.

For a moment, it seemed the bear-like Hyeronemon was going to lose his temper as he wiped himself down, but then he decided it had been a good hit and he roared with laughter, rising by a tiny increment in Ryou's estimate of both his intelligence and sense of fair play. 

"He's built like a girl and he fights like one, but I think I like him! Say, my pretty friend, let me get my own back with a man's game."

"No thank you," Ryou replied distastefully, but Hyeronemon didn't hear him since he'd been bellowing for two cups and a flask. The idiot only meant a drinking competition. Ryou glanced at Darius. That small frown was still there, but when he caught Ryou's look, he shrugged and said softly, "We can leave if you wish to ignore him." Wish to ignore him. That meant that Ryou was free to defend himself; Darius was leaving him the choice, old dead friend notwithstanding. 

The wisest course would have been to take the out and leave. Ryou had gotten in a small blow, he could depart with his dignity intact. He was not going to drag Darius out of his own party, though, he could damn well leave on his own. Right. He wanted to keep a low profile, after all. There was absolutely no reason to- oh, screw it. 

Ryou leaned far over and picked up the bottle that'd been left nearly intact at Dio's feet. He ignored the Ionian's startled, “Hey, watch it, that's _that_ stuff” and swung his legs around and over the end of the couch so that he was facing Hyeronemon across the low table a slave had produced. 

"I take it this is a game where we match drink for drink? I've not played this since I was a boy," Ryou said - lied, actually, he'd never played this as a boy or any other game requiring friends. But it was a way of clearly stating his opinion on this puerile game, which Ryou thought was important for the other, more sober men listening. 

"Good, good! Here!" Hyeronemon brandished a cup Ryou's way. 

Ryou heard a couple of people making bets behind him. With his lighter frame and lack of muscle, it wasn't hard to figure out who the odds were favoring, even if Hyeronemon was much further down the road to ethylic coma than Ryou.

"Oh, go ahead, you have the beer," Ryou said kindly. "It's too weak for me. I prefer something stronger.”

That way, nobody could say the idiot did not get a fair warning, though of course it was obvious how Hyeronemon was going to react to that statement.

The Halicarnacean managed three tumblers of the reinforced liquor before falling over like a felled tree, to the amusement of most of the people around them. As Ryou watched, the bear was dragged out by his half-brother and a couple of friends. He had a happy smile on his face. It would probably not be there tomorrow morning. Fortunately his fall and exit had distracted the revelers, and Ryou was once more unnoticed by the majority of the crowd; only Dio and his buddies were looking at him, a little wide-eyed.

"I did warn him it was a bit stronger than beer," Ryou said apologetically. 

Dio snorted and picked the bottle out of Ryou's hands, giving the liquid a suspicious sniff as if he suspected Ryou of performing some kind of switch. "This stuff is poison. We only drink it in Kalicee. This ass here brought it as a gift." The ass being referred to, an officer named Mygon from Dio's hometown, was presently grinning like a split melon. "But we don't drink it like that, we water it with the juice of lemons like I showed you earlier. No wonder that ox went down. Though you don't look affected."

That wasn't quite true. The room was doing slow spins around Ryou. But he was too good a social drinker to show it, the president had made sure of that, since it was expected of someone of Ryou’s position. The inebriation would pass, more annoying was the growing heartburn from the sticky stuff. Ryou looked around discreetly for his plate and the bread he still had there. 

"It's a question of habit, I suppose." The resiny liquor was no stronger than the cognac Ryou preferred. Strong enough, though; he knew from experience that men used to downing barrels of beer or liters of sake would keel over after a few glasses of anything stronger, even if the overall alcohol levels consumed were the same. Something about the lack of dilution. 

Ryou ate some bread, hoping it'd stay down, then he tried to catch a look at Darius's face out of the corner of his eye, to see if his friend was amused, embarrassed or irritated at Ryou's interference. 

"Don't look at me," Darius said, which was uncanny because to all appearances he was still watching the liquid slowly swirling around in his cup. "You are your own lion." 

He'd spoken softly in the din, Ryou had had to lean forward on the couch to hear, and he wasn't sure he understood. "What does that mean?”

"It means you pick your own battles and your own tactics. I'll carry your shield for you, assuming you ever need it. And I'll be sticking to beer when I'm drinking with you from now on," said Darius with an odd smile behind the rim of his cup. Then Mygon knocked over a bowl of grapes while imitating a bear-like figure falling over backwards, which dragged Darius and Ryou into their conversation.


	2. The Greek Party

A week after that messy interlude with the Ancients, Ryou accompanied Darius to Ayengosor to oversee army maneuvers. It was as nasty as Darius had promised, though with oddly artificial touches of decorum that stood out like slips of silk on a dung heap. Ryou, as a guest of the commander of the Hounds and Leyam’s brother, was well fed and lodged in a nice tent, in a camp full of hungry, sick and tired men. After their twelve day long stay, the commanders of the various armies bid them farewell with speeches that were ridiculously flowery to Ryou’s ears, while on the way out they passed by a long line of gibbets. 

The visit felt dreamlike mere hours after they’d left the marching forces behind. Ryou knew intellectually that these maneuvers were part of a larger strategy that was crucial for control of this and other regions. But as he passed heaping mounds of refuse, latrines and a few pyres still smoking as they consumed dead bodies - what generals in any army would call attrition - Ryou couldn’t help but wonder what the hell he was doing here.

The trip had been tiring both mentally and physically. Getting back to Sura and slipping into a hot bath felt like a new lease on life. Darius reported to Leyam and then the day was used to recover from the trip. A day was as much rest as Ryou needed, however, and about as much as Darius could stand. Darius had made a misery out of the lives of Sura’s defense force that morning, now he and Ryou were spending time together in a very Assyrian pursuit: military exercises. 

Ryou had practiced archery in his youth, a sport without body contact being a good choice for a bully magnet such as himself. He'd been reasonably good at it, since hitting the target was a matter of hand-eye coordination, focus and spatial geometry. The locals were not impressed, however. 

“You’re still standing funny,” said Darius. “It’s no wonder you can’t shoot fast.” He was scratching his chin and squinting as if he himself had a hard time figuring out how Ryou departed from the norm, as represented by the figures painted around the stucco walls of the open-aired training area. To Ryou’s eye, habituated to photography, their stiff poses held only nodding acquaintance towards anatomy and weren’t all that helpful. 

“I get it into the target,” said Ryou archly, fitting the next arrow onto the string. 

“Yeah, but your quarry will die of old age before the arrow actually hits him. Ah, I know, let’s try on horseback.”

“Let’s not.”

“It will help you get a feel for the balance you should be aiming for.”

Ryou made a “Hm” noise as he pulled back, reaching for that concentration that touched on meditation, on inner peace. His mind spiraled inwards, shedding awareness of the noise echoing through the practice yard, of the onlookers judging the Inlander’s performance. Inwards, to the core where his will met the target. 

Darius opened his mouth to say something about letting the shaft loose now.

In Ryou’s mind, the tip of the arrow and the piece of hide stretched over the straw bale were one. He finished his draw and released in one smooth move.

Swish- _thunk_.

“Fine, you _can_ hit the damned thing,” Darius drawled, “but it still takes you too long.” He didn’t sound at all concerned about it. It went without saying that if push came to shove, Ryou’s fighting style would not rely on filling his target with pointy sticks.

“I got it closer to the center than you did,” Ryou replied just as lazily. Darius snorted. It went equally without saying that in warfare, the speed with which Darius had plunked his three shots into the torso-sized target would matter more than pinpoint accuracy and shot grouping. But it was too nice a day for the argument to bother going anywhere. This was merely relaxation, not serious practice for battle. 

The late afternoon air was humming with bumblebees from the nearby lower gardens. This part of the palace grounds near the kennels and stables had been originally set aside, in the time of Leyam’s forefathers, for the training of the noble born. A cull of the great Assyrian families and a new generation dedicated to warfare had had an unintended democratic effect on the yard’s usage; it was now for officers of any level of birth, while the small group of Hounds stationed in the palace barracks used it on the strength of nobody daring to tell them and their commander otherwise. As a result, the yard was always busy and put to good use. 

In the shade of the overhang of the nearby building at one end of the yard, the canvas-wrapped straw dummies, ripped and repaired with rope, then ripped and shredded again, sagged against their poles as if begging to be put out of their misery. The boys being tutored by their fathers or mentors in the art of war were doing their best to oblige, giving out what would eventually become fearful battle yells (but now sounded more like the yip of puppies) as they hewed the targets with their swords. Out in the sunshine, beneath a row of gnarled olive trees, a small coterie of nobles were holding an impromptu javelin competition. Behind them in a sandy circle, men stripped down to their loincloths or naked practiced grappling moves. The other open end where the yard met the wall of the lower gardens was for archery practice, taken over this afternoon by Darius and his personal guard, the latter vying for points in some complicated ladder tournament on which hinged a surprising amount of palm liquor. The yard rang with the sound of men fighting, shouting and laughing in equal measure, while boys between eight and fourteen brought food, wine, fetched and carried for their elders before returning to their own practice, making ready to join the ranks of their fathers’ army. 

Darius let loose three rapid shots, his bow slightly slanted and his balance shifted to one side, as if indeed on horseback. Ryou had to concede the shots had been fast enough to nail the man-sized target quickly before possible retaliation. They weren’t very well grouped. Darius was more a sword fighter than an archer, and Ryou wondered in passing how much his eyesight was affecting matters.

Pointedly taking his time, Ryou plucked his last arrow out of the ground. A glance around to make sure nobody was straying near the targets, then he fitted the notched end to the string. Darius didn’t make any comment on his stance or speed this time There was something in the silence, however, or possibly in the way Darius had taken a step back, that gave Ryou the intuition that his lover was no longer checking out Ryou’s arm or back for that perfect Assyrian-army-approved angle. Ryou focused, but he was suddenly very much aware that, unlike proper archery back home, here he was dressed in nothing but a khiton, sandals and his arm bracer. The aforementioned khiton was considerably shorter than Ryou was used to wearing a garment, not that he had ever had the opportunity before to getting used to wearing a skirt.

"What exactly are you looking at?" Ryou asked acerbically, drawing back as his focus narrowed on the painted square of the bullseye.

"Just admiring your form, beloved," was the drawled answer.

Despite Ryou's best intentions of plonking the arrow in the target in defiance of lewd distractions, the last word caught him short and the shot missed the straw bale by a foot.

When he looked around, Darius threw up his hands, head bowed despite an amused grin. “I apologize, I apologize, I should not have said that."

"Er…" Ryou looked at the arrow somewhere near the garden wall, then at his lover again. He’d initially been startled, now he was puzzled too. "What?"

"No insult intended, I was teasing." Darius was still grinning even as he attempted to hide it by scratching his beard and adopting a penitent stance. 

"Teasing?" Ryou glanced around. Darius's grin had spread across the faces of the nearby Hounds, though they were conspicuously looking at their weapons, the targets, the straw dummies, the sky, just about anything except their commander and his lover. Ryou lowered his voice. "Sorry, I don't get it."

It was Darius's turn to look surprised, then he waved a 'hold it' to the other bowmen, hooked an arm around Ryou's shoulder and pulled him towards the target. "Beloved is what an erastes would call his courted."

"I see. Do you always fight dirty?" Ryou asked dryly.

"I'm notorious for it. But how could I resist? Here I am, teaching you archery like you're a twelve-year-old boy, and a very appealing one at that."

Darius laughed at Ryou's attempt to elbow him in the ribs.

"Are we going to practice wrestling now?" he asked, easily deflecting the second attempt.

"No, we have to get ready, and I want to bathe before we go."

"Go? Oh, the party. We can be late."

"We are certainly not going to be late, that would be extremely rude," Ryou replied severely as he tugged his first two shots out of the target. One of the boys had already jogged forward to get Ryou's other arrow from the ground. "Your brother will be there, and he invited me specifically, as well as you."

"These boring Greek affairs never start on time." Darius had been visibly unenthused about this party from the moment Leyam had issued the invitations.

"We'll be there at the appointed time anyway, when the sun sets." Ryou gave the orb near the top of the nearby trees a pointed look. "Come on."

Darius trailed him good-naturedly, waving the archers back to their practice in passing. Ryou detoured by his quarters to grab some clean clothes before heading to the balneum…but he was surprised when Darius walked right into his room at his heels.

"Aren't you going to get your things?"

"In a minute." Darius was still smirking, but his eyes on Ryou were perceptive. "You are not offended by what I said earlier, are you?"

Ryou blinked back at him in honest surprise. "What? No. I didn't even get it. And according to the Greeks, if there were to be an eromenos in our relationship, it wouldn’t be me," he added archly, getting his own dig in.

"I know, that's why it was so funny. But you seemed oddly startled when I said it considering you didn't catch my drift at the time."

Damn, he'd noticed. In fact Ryou had been mulling thoughts about it ever since. He'd kept them carefully concealed beneath the mask, but trust Darius to catch even a second's worth of lapse.

"I was just surprised. You've never used an endearment before."

"It was a joke."

"Yes, I know." Ryou was taking out of the cedar chest the clothes the tailor had expressly delivered for this function, and laying them on the bed with a little more care and attention than he usually did to avoid looking at Darius standing behind him. "I guess that's not used amongst men our age. Equal partners. Any words like that."

"Depends."

“On what?” Ryou asked, still not turning around but ears pricked. He wondered why the answer actually seemed to matter to him…

"On whether you’re a soldier or poet," Darius said dryly. "Would you take me seriously if I started calling you the star in my sky or the touch of flowers on my skin?”

Ryou couldn't help a chuckle as he gave Darius a disbelieving glance over his shoulder.

“Right?” said Darius, amused both by the mental picture they were sharing as well as the fact he'd gotten Ryou to laugh. "That's from some poet from Ambroxes I was forced to read when I was young, if you're wondering. I can't make that stuff up."

“That's for a woman though, right?”

“Oh no, it was for a man. A young one.”

“That example is a bit extreme,” Ryou said dryly, turning back to his clothes. 

“Pf, sure, but a lot of Greeks often go and wax poetical about their love for their friends. Once they start, you can’t stop them.”

“Friends.” That word would cover both types of relationships, oddly enough, true friendship and the more sexual kind. “I guess that's what you'd call me, hm?”

“Or brother,” said Darius easily.

“Darius, you already have a brother and so do I, so calling me that makes me feel a little odd." His wry remark made Darius chuckle in turn. 

Ryou picked up and folded his clothes, wondering what it was he was looking for when he knew very well that ‘friends’, in the Greek sense, was all that was there. Not that this was a problem, really. Ryou was not a romantic. He appreciated the prosaic term, the solid sense of equality and respect it implied. And maybe that was truly the best word. Theirs was an odd relationship, thinking about it. He and Darius had risked their lives for each other without a moment’s thought, they’d taken leaps of faith on a simple word, with a form of absolute trust that left Ryou awed when he remembered them. But as far as being lovers? They’d had a few hiccups. More than that, there was a sense of reserve there, openly acknowledge - even appreciated in a way. They each had too much sense of self, of independence to just fully...throw themselves head first into stupid declarations of eternal love that really-... Ryou’s thoughts seemed to be trudging around in a circle and he wasn’t sure why. He certainly got the joke now and yes, ‘Beloved’ was too twee for him even without its cultural baggage, but... but it occurred to him that in all his life nobody had ever given him so much as a pet name, Ice Prince notwithstanding. Nobody had ever- why was he dwelling on this...?

Ryou knew his face betrayed nothing of his thoughts, not that it would have mattered since his back was turned to Darius anyway. Yet- 

Yet suddenly there were two hands on his shoulders and a mouth speaking near his cheek. "Shield brother. Is that more to your taste?"

"The distinction is appreciated."

"My wise and learned comrade to whom I owe my life," said Darius in a lower voice. "Is that appreciated?"

"Yes, I guess, though the life debt is quite mutual," Ryou answered, studiously chasing out a wrinkle from his folded tunic with the flat of his palm.

The arms wrapped around him and pulled him back against Darius's chest, while the clothes tumbled to the floor. "My closest friend who shares my bed. My shield and my rest and my warmth in the night," murmured Darius. "My lion who is all the more deadly when he is quiet and walking in my shadow, now, is that appreci-" but he was interrupted by a kiss. 

 

\---

 

"You're late," Leyam announced archly as Ryou trotted up the steps, followed more lazily by Darius. "The sun is set and halfway through the underworld by now. Gods blind me, it's about to _rise_." 

"I'm sorry," Ryou said, ignoring out of habit the wild exaggerations (the sun had dipped barely half an hour ago, Ryou had noted it's disappearance while hurtling clothes onto his regrettably unwashed self and badgering Darius into doing the same.) "We didn't see the time go by."

"You may not, but these buggers sure have," Leyam muttered with a glance over his shoulder at the people gathered in a loose half circle a short distance away. "The Greeks are sticklers for punctuality."

"Oh, are they?" Ryou asked, frying his lover with a high temperature stare which only made Darius smirk. 

“Well come in already,” Leyam huffed before turning with a grandiose gesture and a flip of the wrist, his long auburn wig adorned with gold ribbons swinging like a cape at his shoulders. His two armed, armored and burly bodyguards followed immediately, somehow reinforcing the feminine effect rather than diluting it. 

The five Greeks waited at the entrance of the great hall, four elderly men and one woman. Darius had informed Ryou that there would be women present, in a tone that made it clear that surely here was a yardstick to measure how boring and uninspired this affair would be. 

The five greeted the new guests formally. Very formally. One might even say stiffly. Either punctuality truly was one of their reigning philosophical principles, or possibly even their religion, or else there were undercurrents here Ryou wasn’t aware of here. This being Leyam’s court, Ryou was willing to bury his overactive sense of guilt for once and blame the latter. Leyam’s brassy smile and Darius’s feral one seemed to reinforce that hypotheses.

The hall was considerably cooler and more mannerly than during the victory feast weeks ago. It was decently lit with dozens of large lanterns of brass and thin-cut ivory, leaving the firepit unused, a deserted ashy wasteland. Sixty or so people - a good quarter of them women - talked calmly in small knots dispersed throughout the hall. There was one long table pushed to one side with fruit and cold meats, and slaves walked from group to group proffering an Assyrian drink Ryou had run into before: a type of vinegary wine laced with spices and squeezed figs. 

The feeling of sobriety extended to the dress sense. This was definitely what Darius had called “a Greek affair”, as everyone was dressed in the Greek-style tunics and togas - even though Ryou had figured out from hearsay around the court that a good half of the attendees were in fact Assyrian. Everybody kept referring to this group as The Greeks - with an occasionally very rude or offensive term tagged on - but Ryou had by now figured out this was more a political or philosophical affiliation than a birthplace. Ryou had a hard time understanding what exactly these people represented. It seemed it was obvious to everyone in Sura, and quite inexplicable to befuddled foreigners.

Whatever they represented, Ryou had a feeling they were a force to contend with, as even Leyam had adopted their more sober Greek garb for the occasion. Granted, a thoroughly female version thereof, a light green toga affair that descended to his golden sandals, the ever present bangles around his arms announcing his arrival as surely as trumpets. Being Leyam, he stood out anyway by his very presence, particularly in this sober conclave. People turned at his approach, bowed. 

“Alright,” Darius muttered. He gave a distant wine-bearing slave a longing look before squaring his shoulders. “I need to go salute Adrasus and his lil’ coterie. Stay here. You don’t want to talk to this clod, he’s a goat-fucking menace and an all-around long-winded pain in the ass. Leyam should have him heaved off a cliff.” The last was barely a mutter as he headed off towards a small knot of people near the center of the hall. A man of about forty had turned towards them and seemed to be awaiting him ahead of the group, this Adrasus presumably. He didn’t look like a menace, in fact he looked like one of Ryou’s school teachers. The faint sallowness to his face could be attributable to a past bout of jaundice, while the way his eyes were narrowed in a squint would be due to eye disease, but nonetheless the resemblance was striking. Particularly the way he wasn’t moving forward with a salute but was waiting there, hands clasped, as an obstreperous pupil advanced towards him. 

Left to his own devices, Ryou drifted with the ease of a well-honed business party animal’s ability to blend into this new Savannah. He scored a glass of wine to hold - not to drink, though, heaven forbid, this stuff was vile - and walked at a tangent that seemed to be taking him towards the food table. He had no particular aim in mind, just to keep moving, get a feel for the various conversations. Pity there seemed to be absolutely nobody he knew here...

It was the look on the woman’s face that drew him in. The intensity and startling rawness of feeling bent his trajectory around to her conclave like a comet curving towards the sun’s gravity. The group around her, attending her at a respectful distance, was easy to join. Ryou listened curiously. 

She was tall for a woman, dressed as soberly as the others, in her forties perhaps, her stomach somewhat pudgy from past childbirths while her arms were starting to get wrinkled and scrawny. It didn’t matter. Her physique didn’t matter, there was fire here. 

She spoke abruptly, her voice oddly toneless, her eyes closed and that elegiac expression on her face. 

“What use the reed   
against the spear?  
But is it not my duty   
to cast the reed in its way?  
Should life be spared for weakness   
and strength alone die in sacrifice?”

It took Ryou a few seconds and the odd white noise of the Gift having sudden seizures of uncertainty to realize that she was declaiming poetry. It didn’t rhyme for him - he couldn’t swear it was rhyming in Greek or Assyrian either. 

“What use the reed  
against the army?  
But is it not my duty   
to set the reed ablaze?  
To change the course of trampling feet  
and send them to another death?

What use the reed  
against the tide   
But is it not my duty   
to weave the reeds together?  
To share the burden with others  
and conquer the current as one?

all unsung  
unsung  
but greater glory in that sacrifice  
for my name will never be known  
will never echo on the beat of spears  
will never be sung by rhapsodes  
will never be found in the mouths of my heirs  
that have lived on through my blood  
to build an empire anew.”

A silence followed the last stanza. People nodded. A man near the poetess had tears rolling down his cheeks. The top part of Ryou’s rational mind was scratching its metaphorical head, saying “I don’t get it.” A deeper part of himself that perhaps he was starting to hear better these days said, “I understand it anyway...” He felt an odd tightening in his chest, a faint pain, a catch in his breath he couldn’t explain, only acknowledge. Maybe it was the intentness of the woman who was visibly the author of these words, as much as the words themselves, that gave them meaning.

There was no clapping, no words even spoken that loud; a rustle of tunics as people turned to each other to nod or whisper. “Modern style,” someone near Ryou muttered, sounding faintly dismissive. “Yes,” a woman answered immediately, a short hushed word that enjoined silence and respect.

A woman near the author handed her a goblet. The poetess opened her eyes as she felt metal press into her hand. Ryou thought she was blind for an instant, but then her eyes did focus. On him. She looked mildly startled - he’d never seen her in Sura, she could be a visitor, and he stood out in this crowd more than he did amongst the heterogeneous Hounds or the courtiers who were now used to him. Her wide brown eyes flicked over his features, then over a few other faces in the crowd with rapidly losing interest. Eventually the lids slid shut as her inner world claimed her again. Her friend took the goblet out of her hand. They fell to her side, palm out towards the audience as if giving them everything in between. 

“Please, honored one, A Field of Flowers,” murmured a woman in the crowd.

“Please, honored one, Bleached Bones,” said a man next to Ryou.

The woman made no signal she’d heard any of them, she might have followed one of those polite whispered suggestions or merely the call of her own muses when she opened her mouth to speak again. 

The next bit was different; definitely not ‘modern style’, even Ryou could tell as much. The stanzas were longer, measured, almost more a spoken chant than poetry (the gift fritzed on cue). It was a story about two brothers. From the way the audience listened raptly, this was a very stirring tale, possibly with a thought-provoking moral at the end, however the brothers had very long Greek names both starting with X and ending with -edes, and Ryou got them hopelessly mixed up immediately. From what he knew of declamatory poetry in the Pariya region, this now could go on for hours.

His gaze flickered over to another small group at the end of the hall, a part of the room conspicuously empty of casual listeners. Half a dozen Greeks faced Leyam and Darius. Leyam was smiling. Darius, right behind his brother, had his arms crossed and that hawk-like look on his face. It was their usual double act. The bodyguards like the upright sides of a vicious picture frame completed the effect. Ryou was not surprised that the opposite party was in a wedge formation in response, but the silver-haired man at the head of the taskforce did not looked as cowed as many others would be. Whatever they were discussing must be serious and intent. Ryou hesitated, divided between staying out of strong and dangerous political currents and muddying Leyam’s game, and wanting to stand on their side and make up the numbers even if he could only watch and listen.

He edged away professionally. A few others had also broken away at some point and wandered off, while others had joined the audience. The poetess, eyes closed, was oblivious and uncaring to each and every one of them equally. 

He became aware that the man beside him, who’d made a suggestion for a new poem earlier, had drifted off with him and was matching his step. Ryou glanced sideways in surprise and felt a pinch of adrenaline as he realized it was none other than the goat-fucking menace Darius had specifically told him to avoid. 

“You appeared to appreciate Ovidie,” the man, Adrasus said, in a clear attempt to get the conversational ball rolling. 

“Right, certainly,” said Ryou, hoping this was the name of the poetess and not the wine. He turned slightly away - Adrasus moved quickly to position himself facing Ryou again. The only way he’d escape this conversation was by being discourteous, and remembering the way Darius had squared his shoulders and trudged forward, Ryou was not about to do that without clear cause.

There followed a series of platitudes familiar to anyone who’d spent any time in the court of Assyria. Names of common acquaintances evoked, comments on the weather, the harvest and the war. Adrasus straightened imperceptibly and looked Ryou over with a bit more attention, as if judging his handling of civilities to be greater than anticipated. He must have had somewhat low expectations. Because Ryou was a foreigner, or because of his association with Darius, or maybe just because he’d been late (that was the last time Ryou was going to trust his lover’s advice on punctuality.)

Curious as to where this was eventually going, Ryou let the Greek steer the conversation adroitly away from generalities and into a more pointed observation of Ryou’s status of a new arrival at court. He agreed with Adrasus that this court was quite different than the palaces of Ezo. The sardonic way the man had said “Ezo” put him in the comfortably large minority who now had a good idea of where Ryou really came from. 

Adrasus drank deeply from his goblet - Ryou pretended to sip out of politeness - and then he took a step nearer Ryou. His breath stank, a sour smell that was stronger than even wine could explain, but his eyes were clear and intent as buzzsaws. 

“I hear that in Ezo, men are born free.”

He said it like a pass phrase to a secret brotherhood. Ryou, puzzled, turned the words around one way and then another. “Women too,” he finally hazarded. 

Adrasus leaned back a trifle, eyes widening as if Ryou had said something quite radical, though admirable too. Oh dear, thought Ryou, eyes straying towards Darius and Leyam, still intent on their own discussions. 

“Very interesting. Very interesting.” Adrasus swirled his wine. 

Andrasus hesitated a touch, eyes fleeting towards Leyam and his little group. “Tell me, Lord Ryou, would you possibly be interested in meeting some friends of mine in the Greek quarter some day? I am sure they would be interested in hosting you in honor.”

“Ah, well-“

“It is a group of philosophical discussion. There are not only Greeks there, but Assyrians too, and Ionians. The party would be small, however,” he added quickly. “No more than a dozen.”

“I would have to see what the coming days will bring,” said Ryou with the smoothness of a business manager used to shedding unwanted invitations with utmost politeness. Too bad he couldn’t mention his schedule or his assistant.

Adrasus, who was definitely no fool, immediately backed off. “We hold these conversations every twelveday, please feel free to contact me through any scribe or messenger if you ever wished for an interesting gathering of like minds. Ovidie often appears at these meetings, so does Tekanis of Mygdon, as well as Hipponous at least once a year. We usually hold those meetings at the public auditorium, however, many wish to come hear him speak.”

“Speak about what?” Ryou asked, somewhat emboldened by Adrasus’ lack of pressure.

“Of causes that we champion before our fellow men,” said Adrasus, still very neutral and open. “Causes such as...Senata,”

”...Senata?” Ryou had to ask, as the way the word had been dropped, portentous and heavy in its small pause, made it the whole focus of the ten minute conversation.

Adrasus looked surprised. “Senata. The cause of Senata of Aksum. The famous abolitionist?”

“Abolitionist of what?” Ryou asked, attention suddenly focused, laser sharp.

“Of slavery, of course.”

 

\---

 

“Yeah, fucking abolitionists,” said Darius, striding through the gloom at the edge of the torch carried by, ironically enough, a young slave up ahead.

“I take it their cause is gaining traction,” said Ryou carefully. He’d wondered where Darius stood on the matter, while rather dreading the answer.

“And wouldn’t that be a disaster.”

“He said a lot of people oppose the idea out of respect for tradition,” Ryou suggested, teasing out a line into the flow of the river, as the Assyrian saying went.

“Yeah, damn right they do. Not that that’s my care. I buck tradition every time I get on a horse and ride out with the Hounds. The old crusts say I’m the end of our Assyrian customs every time I win a battle. Fuck them along with the abolitionists. My problem with Adrasus and his crazy ideas are practical. What do we do with the thousands of slaves around Sura? Hey, you. Soletes, right? Where were you born?”

The lad started and turned back in surprise. “Me? In Sura, Lord Ghan.”

“Yeah, but where specifically?” 

“In the palace slave quarters...?”

“Yeah, exactly. Where would you go if we kicked you out? We’re not kicking you out, don’t drop the torch, I’m just making a point with my friend here.”

“It’s okay, you’re fine, just keep the light steady up ahead,” added Ryou kindly, indicating that the boy should move on with a gentle gesture. The kid didn’t look at that bright and was obviously beginning to panic.

“See?” said Darius as if he’d won a long philosophical argument. In a way he had, in his inimitable way: with the boy’s reaction and also the fact that he knew the kid’s name in the first place. Ryou had talked for half an hour with Adrasus. He’d seen a burning conviction there, but a lot of cold certitude that Ryou recognized. It was the kind of power that leveled mountains, but wouldn’t care for the name of a young boy in his service.

That did not make his cause wrong, however. 

“I take it they would like this to be a very gradual process-“

“And what about prisoners of war? These cracked chamber pots just spout their ideas out and never think of the consequences. I know I alway _say_ I’ll slit the throat of every adult male if a city resists our forces, but I don’t actually want to do it. What do we do with thousands of captured men who can’t make ransom?”

“Send them home?” Ryou asked before he could stop himself. “Take a few key nobles hostage as insurance of good behavior?” That had been the approach in Feudal days. 

Darius snorted. “Huh-uh. And where would we send our freemen, huh?”

Ah yes, the three-tier system. 

When he’d first realized on arriving in the Outlands that slavery was common here, it had conjured up images of the worst abuses in human history. And of course that was sometimes the case, but only in part. Slavery in the Pariya region was extremely common and was its own parallel civilization. The bottom class were the condemned criminals sent to mines and construction sites, in essence a slow method of execution. Poor people sold into slavery by desperate parents or civilians captured during raids ended up in brothels or work gangs and fared little better, and they were the ones Ryou felt horrible about. But the ‘middle class’ of slavery was composed of the indebted and captured soldiers, sold to individuals or cities to become laborers, aides, domestic workers, farmhands. As expensive property, they had a small amount of legal protection, and a greater moral one. Every Assyrian man who looked at one of them saw himself there, if he fell into debt or was captured in battle. Were some badly treated? Certainly. But then again, so were four fifths of the general population of these primitive regions, free or not. Poor people in the Pariya region worked back-breaking hours for bare sustenance, and were at the mercy of nobles and kings. The contrast was greatest with the top tier of slaves - men such as Arbi, a scribe of Tupila’s Ryou had known and talked to and appreciated for over a month before even finding out that he was a slave, more or less by accident. Many poor Assyrians, if they could choose, might prefer to be a palace slave like Soletes rather than a free man. Soletes wasn’t free and never would be, but he was well fed, well dressed, his work was long but not overly harsh, and if he pleased his masters he might be allowed one day to keep a fellow slave as wife, and even have a say in the placement of his children. By contrast, a free man living in the lower tiers of Sura was uneducated, starving half the time, unable to maintain a wife and family at all, eking out a living on a scrap of land which, beyond a cheap tunic and a pair of sandals, might be the only thing they could be said to own, if it wasn’t held in fief by a noble. 

...Yet that urge to be free was always there. Some never reached for it, but there were thousands of these middle to higher tier slaves who worked hard for their masters, earning merits - even money in some venues of life - and bought their freedom. Those freemen needed places to go, trades, room to establish themselves, their own fields to till. They were encouraged to take over conquered regions and bring Assyria’s civilization with them. If those lands hadn’t been partially emptied by the taking of prisoners first, where would they go?

The discussion of Adrasus and his cause lasted until they reached their quarters. Ryou asked questions but did not get on a high horse. For starters, though he couldn’t deny that the word Abolitionist had been like a door thrown open where he’d thought there was nothing but a thick wall before, it was painfully obvious that Adrasus had a political agenda in approaching Ryou, and no love for Darius and possibly even for Leyam. The cause might sound attractive, but Ryou suspected there was a lot of baggage attached to it. For starters, Adrasus had started off talking about abolition, but had quickly deviated into a talk about creating stronger democratic representation in Assyria, to sway the matter in their favor, which lead to talk of a populous vote. A vote, Ryou had discerned with tired irony, that ex-slaves, the children of Roman parents, poor people and women of any shape or social caste would not be allowed to have. Adrasus was all for being born free, but living with a whole bunch of strictures that seemed ridiculously artificial to Ryou. 

...But the point of a discussion group was to debate ideas, new ones as well as old. Maybe these people could be influenced... and change had to start somewhere. The transition would be difficult, but that did not make it worthless. Even before modernization, many societies had worked fine without slavery. That is to say, the poor had been crushed by ignorance, near-famine and disease same as they were now, but at least that one ugly threat had been removed from their lives. And maybe this was a necessary transition for greater improvements in society.

Ryou stared at the ceiling above his bed, turning the matter over in his mind before reluctantly putting it aside. Darius was against the notion for good reasons - though they were reasons that could be worked around if push came to shove. But Leyam was against it too. Ryou had thought the king’s presence might represent an opening to the Greek cause, a faint hint of support. But Leyam kept his friends watching his borders and his enemies as close as a knife, as they said in Assyria. Darius had confirmed it. The Greeks were a growing power, they’d garnered the king’s attention and wariness. And they were trying to use Ryou as another piece in this power play.

It was wrenching, but Ryou decided to let the subject drop for now. Fundamentally, this was not his home, his country. He’d not hesitate to give people his opinion on slavery - and women’s rights - when prompted, but he was not about to drop a match in a powder keg, not without a hell of a lot of research into the matter first, as well as a pointed discussion with Leyam about the full political implications. The first ‘troops’ the Romans had sent into Assyria had been civilian political advisors who’d reanimated flames of independences in the provinces. The Greeks were an old faction, but who knew where their latest growing importance was really coming from?

Not his home...not really...The Per Gathas was full of Inlanders with political power - and very real magical power too. The weight and might of that organization made Ryou feel like a student standing out in the rain holding a “Save The Whales” placard. They had the means, they almost certainly had the ideals, at least some of them. They did nothing. They did not interfere in a country that they considered barbaric on many levels. Their children, and their children’s children would not be living here, whatever the situation, and neither were Ryou’s, of course. What right did they have to interfere with the inner workings of this country? The Greeks _were_ the inner workings, they were for the most part Assyrian or part of the Pariya region. Let them carry their cause if they could, Ryou wished them good luck with all his heart, war prisoners notwithstanding, but he couldn’t join them actively.

He turned in his bed, and, despite his well reasoned, rational decision, felt rather unsatisfied with himself...


	3. The Party He Missed

Steeped in Assyrian culture, Ryou had heard mention of ‘haoma’, a holy drink that the ancestral Assyrians produced from a plant that had unfortunately not made it across the Paths and did not grow in the Outlands. It had flourished in legends and conflated with the Greek notion of a divine drink, a mythical beverage only the gods enjoyed, that would confer health and happiness to the drinker - usually some demigod brute who would probably slam it down like the Hounds did their palm liquor once they were off the battlefield. 

Ryou had no idea what haoma used to taste like, but it couldn’t be any better than this...

“Would you like some more tea?” Haaskoning asked kindly, his faint smile pretending he didn’t know this was the fifth time he’d asked this question. He might even know how many cups Ryou had consumed since coming to Asha Mayniu a fortnight ago.

Ryou’s good manners grappled his greed to the ground and tried to smother it, but the moment’s pause had given Haaskoning, who knew his audience by now, the time to lean over and fill the cup without further bidding. 

“Thank you,” said Ryou, “you are too kind.”

“We have plenty, fortunately. I believe Diya is putting a packet or two in your luggage as we speak.“

“Oh that’s not necessary!”

”Try telling her that, but I wouldn’t dare get in her way if I were you. Just remember to boil the water for a full minute or two when you’re back in Assyria - and you remember what I said about bilharzia, right?”

The tea tasted just a trifle less good as Ryou nodded.

“So...” Haaskoning settled back into the decorated pillows of the couch, then glanced at a grandfather clock against the wall. “We still have some time. What were we- oh yes, we were discussing our patchwork quilt of temporal and spatial anomalies. I am sorry to have this conversation now, just when you’re about to leave.”

He’d already apologized several times, almost as many times as Ryou had hogged the tea. 

“I understand,” said Ryou politely and also sincerely. He did understand. There was a war going on and Haaskoning was the head of the order fighting one side of it.

 

\---

 

Ten days ago, when Ryou had arrived, he’d had perhaps an hour to touch base with the leader of the Per Gathas before the latter had to leave on deployment on the edge of the Great Spiral. Apparently shooting off to the front line while leaving Ryou behind to study in comfort was a trend these days- 

...no, Ryou refused to think about that. 

If Haaskoning had been surprised to see Ryou finally accept his open-ended invitation, he showed no sign. If he’d been surprised to see Ryou alone, he made no comment, to Ryou’s relief.

The news he had to share with Ryou was grim, and reminded Ryou why he was here in the first place, alone or otherwise. The three thousand year cold war that’d only been occasionally interrupted by a few minor skirmishes or punitive expeditions, was heating up uncomfortably. And the worst news, as far as Ryou was concerned, was that the Ancient one who’d kidnapped Ryou and Darius, Menkaperreseneb, had disappeared.

“Yes, I know I said he couldn’t do that,” Haaskoning had sighed in response to Ryou’s stilted reaction to the news. “And from what we saw when we found his lair, he did not do it of his own free will. I suspect his allies knew we would find him eventually, and they concluded he didn’t stand a chance against us. So they removed him,”

“So he’s out there?!” Ryou had bitten his lip until he tasted blood. It’d been difficult to see Darius leave a few days ago to the mystery destination where Leyam had ordered him to deploy the Hounds. Even though Andrap and other Per Gathas bodyguards had been provided, the thought of Darius walking a Path without him had been hard enough, back when he’d thought one of their strongest enemies was surely dead. 

“I don’t think you have to worry about Menkaperreseneb.” Haaskoning had looked troubled (and thus not very comforting). 

“Why not?!”

“Because removing him from his shell will have been traumatic - it may have killed him outright - and it certainly will remove a great amount of his abilities.”

”...Oh. But why did they do it, then?”

Haaskoning’s eyes had been unfocused while his hands unconsciously straightened a sheaf of reports on his desk. “I don’t know. For the past three thousand years - for the past thirty I’ve been in the Per Gathas - we would never have had a surprise like this. It would have been completely obvious that Menkaperreseneb would be where you’d left him. Either his allies would have killed him outright, or they would have left him to fight and die in the kind hope he’d take as many of our own as he could with him. I didn’t even know he _could_ be ripped away from his self-shell. The very idea of it churns my stomach, even though I disliked him a great deal. I... there is somebody here, in the Ancients, who thinks in new ways. I’ve been...” his fingers tapped the reports, a tense tattoo. “I’ve been re-evaluating incidents from as much as three years past. I’ve got to go soon,” he finished abruptly, standing up. “I will introduce you to Diya, she’ll get you started.”

Ryou had wanted to go with him, however unreasonable it would be. He’d wanted to go with Darius even more. Darius was out there fighting - Darius was caught up in a _war_ against the strongest military power in the Outlands _and_ an unwitting puppet of the Ancients, he was in very real danger. 

But Ryou was a rationalist. Right now, he could not help anyone of Haaskoning’s caliber. And though he might be able to help Darius a little at this juncture, he didn’t have enough knowledge to be truly effective. Not against an enemy who was now getting the measure of this newly arrived Inlander magian. So with the cold hard control he’d learned throughout his life, he’d kept his appointment at Asha Mayniu, even though Leyam’s orders and the needs of war had pulled a reluctant but obedient Hound away. Ryou dedicated himself to learning learn as much as he could force into his brain in the scant fortnight he had, ignoring the general mobilization all around him that he could not yet be effective in assisting with.

 

\---

 

The past ten days had not been useless. Every morning Ryou sat on an introductory course in spacial anomalies along with a gaggle of goggling twelve year olds. His afternoons belonged to Zabessa, learning and practicing more advanced methods of multi-dimensional defense and attack. 

Zabessa of the Third Circle (Per Gathas only identified by their rank in their order, not their origins like many others did in the Outlands) was a lovely vigorous young lady, originally hailing from some remote region he’d never heard of, and prone to practical jokes and surprise attacks when she thought her pupil’s attention was waning. She was a fighter, one of the Per Gathas warriors like Andrap, their shock troops; she was only away from front lines due to a broken ankle. Because, as she pointed out, knowing how to hold the fundamental material of the world in your hand like a lotus flower will not stop you from tripping over it if you’re not careful. Ryou had heard rumors that suggested her stumble might have been caused by something a bit more spectacular than tripping over something... but she didn’t elaborate and Ryou was too polite to push. 

Ryou’s evenings, and late nights (and early mornings too when worry over an absent friend robbed him of sleep) were spent with books from the library. He and the librarian were becoming fast acquaintances. The man’s job was to sure nobody could access certain levels of lore unless they were of the appropriate circle. Diya had been required to make quite a few negotiations on Ryou’s behalf to even let him set foot in the place and borrow the English tomes. As for those that weren’t in a language Ryou could read, one of the librarians started teaching him workarounds. 

The days at Asha Mayniu had trickled by, both too slow and yet too fast when he measured all he still needed to learn. In the little spare time he’d had, Ryou talked to other Magians. A bit. Those left in the Per Gathas stronghold were older men and women who, for the most part, did not have the mental agility to understand the sudden changes besetting their three thousand year order. 

That was not the only reason Ryou had a hard time communicating with them. Other than Diya, who was Haaskoning’s delegate as well as his wife and thus far too busy to do more than kindly make sure Ryou was well housed, well fed and well treated, all the other magian Ryou had contact with had been Outlanders originally. It was understood that becoming a Son (or Daughter, as Diya would rapidly point out) of the Path preempted all other allegiances, but talking to Outlanders was just not the same as talking with other Inlanders. There were entire millennia of shared history missing; even attitudes and fundamental ways of thinking were different. Which was what he’d been discussing, in a broader sense, with Haaskoning when the latter had finally shown up, only a few hours before Ryou had to leave. 

\---

 

“Yes, the pieces of countries and epochs, old and new, that make up the Outlands change very little. It’s actually quite surprising.” Haaskoning settled his round rump a little more firmly in the cushion. He looked tired, but Ryou had the feeling he was also pleased to be having a discussion that did not involve battle strategies or life-and-death decisions. “Especially for people like us, from Inland. We’ve come to think at a very deep level that evolution and innovation are inherent to mankind. But no, most of the cultural enclaves change very little.”

“Bar things like cannons,” Ryou commented dryly (it was already established that Haaskoning had known about this previously). 

“Ah, but I do not expect them to keep that,” said Haaskoning thoughtfully. “Your friend, Lord Ghan, and King Leyam are innovators in their field of military and politics, yet I am ready to bet that, in two hundred years, the greatest part of their innovations will be once more forgotten.”

”...Really? But they’re beating back the Romans with these new ways of thinking.”

“True, and some things may stick. They will probably keep the notion of a more flexible deployment of calvary, for example. Other things have changed too in the past few thousand years. Slavery, for instance.”

Ryou’s tea cup rattled in its saucer as Haaskoning put a finger right on a spot that was still awfully sore as far as Ryou was concerned.

“I see from your expression that this is not something you find easy to accept,” said Haaskoning mildly. “I don’t blame you, I had much the same reaction when I first arrived here - because we even have them here too. Slaves, I mean.”

“You-...you do?”

“I’m afraid so. Though really they are more serfs than slaves - the distinction may seem fine, but they have more social and legal protection, for starters, and avenues towards freedom. But at the end of the day, they are bound to my organization, they must work for free-... well, it is a system that has been in place for over three thousand years and I do not have the power to change it, it is too deeply ingrained in both the Per Gathas and the minds of the Outlanders within our ranks. As it is in Assyria and the Pariya region in general. However, being a slave in your city of Sura now has nothing to do with being a slave in Assyria three thousand years ago. They slowly adopted the tiered system of the Greeks, and refined it in contact with the Romans.”

Ryou nodded. 

“Philosophy and science have also evolved, as have the rights of the common man. Though Assyria is in a lot of ways a society steeped in its antique roots, it is still a very different place than if you'd been dropped back in time over three thousand years. We have tracked that evolution. It’s one of our duties, to watch and record changes, from major to minor - for instance, the average height of the population has increased over three inches in the past few thousand years, even though only a little has changed in their diet and overall health. It’s very interesting,” Haaskoning said earnestly. Ryou had realized mere minutes after meeting him the first time that the leader of the Per Gathas was a general and a high priest by necessity, but he was really a researcher and builder at heart. “Historians here and back Inland would sell their soul for the right to look through our records. Um... what was I talking about?”

“About changes - or lack of changes in the Outlands, specifically the Pariya.”

“Ah yes. So small incremental changes are seen, but still a society out of antiquity. By comparison, how much have the Inlands changed in the past four thousand years? Why would these countries not follow the same evolution?”

Ryou blinked when he realized the question wasn’t rhetorical. “I don’t know?”

“I’m sure you’ll adopt your own theory in time.” Haaskoning’s grin seemed to be sharing a secret with him. “Thinking about such things is a common game we Inlanders play. Most of my colleagues believe it is the lack of contact between countries that keeps them so static. I do not like this concept. Hah, I am a child of the 60’s, I do not agree that war brings progress and that without it, humanity would stagnate. But contact, whether for good or for violence, causes cross-pollination, challenge, growth, progress. This is, for the most part, lacking here. There is some contact and trade, but there is often no pressure to adopt changes at the accelerated pace back home. Which is why we have these little pockets of different times, different cultures. A strange construct that we believe - but purely as an act of faith - is deliberate.”

“Deliberate?” 

“In the Per Gathas, different variations of beliefs are allowed, so I don't say we have a religion, but we have a loose...overarching spiritual motif, if you will; names and numbers and symbols are up to each man, but we all believe there is a power above us all, and that Zoroaster - Zaratusra here - is its prophet. Or...maybe he's ours, the human race's. That's what I find myself believing after half a lifetime following his teachings and trying to uphold his rules and make sense of what I'm doing.

“We believe it is not our right to change them, you see. Whether this magnificent construct is a museum or an experiment or whatever, it's there to show something. Maybe He wanted to show the power that made this strange universe what Man is made of. Of our destructive instincts or our better ones, which will triumph? In that context, though it'd be better to have a thousand petri dishes rather than one mixed one, it doesn't really matter in the end. A power greater than all of us is watching us. I believe it is watching us in hope that we prove ourselves fit to be who we are. But then again, I grew up in a judeo-christian country, which means my mentality is shaped by the fundamental notion of a benign loving god, however much of an agnostic I was. My Outland colleagues tend to have very different notions...”

“What do atheists think?” Ryou asked a bit acidly. The idea of an intelligent design to anything, even this spatial improbability, riled his scientific spirit.

“They believe this is all one gigantic cosmic bubble of chaos and chance, and that Zoroaster is, ah, mistaken in a lot of his assumptions, would be the politer way of putting it. But like many people of our Inland countries, they accept his message because they believe in the fundamental logic beneath it. It is not our place, it is not our ability to see that far, to decide which thing is wrong for a country, and which is right. There are practices here and elsewhere that are truly abhorrent - trust me, if you think Assyria has unpleasant methods of public execution, you should see what they’re doing in the offshoots of the old southern American continent, from the old Incan empire. Extraordinary art, their cloth weaving is nonpareil, but-... some things are very unpleasant.”

“Such as?” asked Ryou who was even more ignorant of that period than he was of middle eastern history.

“If you don't know... mind you, all but one region have now totally forsworn some of their darker rituals such as mass human sacrifice. Their religion has evolved into something a little different, a little unique, and that would not have happened if we'd influenced it.” 

“That sounds very good, but these are real people suffering. Not doing anything is like- like our civilizations turning our back on third world countries,” said Ryou with the assurance of one who knew he'd scored a point - before he remembered how very, very good he'd gotten back in his old life at not thinking about the situations of those countries other than UST's occasional charity drives.

“True. Though some would argue that we are obligated to help now because their current predicament is caused by our past colonization. A colonization that had been due to rampant greed by the merchants and politicians, but also by honest desire to help bring enlightenment and salvation by priests and scholars. Don't make that face, those last two things seem blindingly wrong in hindsight, but many of our- sorry, rather, my forefathers, honestly thought they were doing their colonies a favor, through lack of foresight and because they were persuaded they knew best. And you see perhaps now why we in the Per Gathas abstain from such decisions.” 

“This is leading to some Non Intervention policy like Star Trek, isn't it.”

“What trek?”

“Never mind, it may be after your time.”

“So to answer your initial question - by my flame, the one you asked almost an hour ago, my apologies. When I’m shooting around ideas about this with another Inlander, especially someone who might have a new perspective, I just can’t stay on subject.”

“That’s all right.” It was not like the many tangents hadn’t been fascinating. 

“So to answer your question: No. We are not overly concerned with, how did you call it, you polluting Assyria with modern ideas, though many here would prefer you be discreet, for your own sake as well as the people around you. However, if you did try to change things, it is my belief these changes would only take root due to other outside influences, otherwise they would be blithely ignored.”

“Blithely ignored...You’ve met Tupila, Leyam’s chancellor, I take it?”

“Heh? Who?”

“Never mind.” Ryou put down his teacup out of reach of Haaskoning. If he drank any more, he’d not be able to walk the Path soon without stopping every five minutes for the kind of break Zoroaster/Zaratusra would not consider fit for consecrated ground. Though if there truly was a real man behind this all, presumably he had also had to pee at some point. Ryou found himself wondering who he had been and what he’d been like. If he was in fact a real person and not, like many historical figures from that far back, a concatenation of several different people and at least one legend. The famous Per Gathas records had only been officially started a few hundred years after their initial migration to the Outlands, before that their history had been mostly oral. 

“But if the ways of these Ancients are changing-” Ryou started to say, when he was interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Casper? Someone needs you. Ah, Ryou, it’s time to go.” Diya’s wide, easy smile covered her husband, her guest and the teapot with warm approval. 

\---

 

“What _I_ think of Assyria?” Diya snorted. “I’m not allowed to go anywhere in the Pariya without Casper along to hold my hand and protect my virtue. Need I say more?”

Diya was stomping along the Path. She was in her fifties, a small round woman with a very sharp eye and the power to make an entire army vanish into the Void with a mental flicker. Ryou personally thought Casper Haaskoning accompanied her to protect fools who might disrespect his wife rather than the other way around. 

But she had a point. Women’s rights in the Pariya? It was good that she was only walking Ryou through the Path and into Mooncrest, or he had a feeling this was a subject she could bang on about for quite awhile, and be ready to punch any Assyrian man who looked at her sideways on arrival. 

Diya had been born some fifty years ago in a village somewhere in India, Maharashtra she’d informed him (not that that helped, Ryou’s grasp of geography had failed again.) She was, simply put, a mathematical genius. Her father was a school teacher, and had noticed that his daughter had mastered equations by the time the children in his class had mastered the art of counting to ten. Like Mozart writing operas by the time he was six, Haaskoning had said with a gentle smile when he’d talked about her. But Mozart hadn’t accidentally fallen through a rift to the Outlands created by his own abilities when he was ten. Fortunately Diya had ended up in a Circle, like many Inlanders who stumbled through a rift. So very fortunate. The idea of a young girl wandering through some of the places he’d been-... it made Ryou shudder. 

The next bit however was not to his liking. It turned out that the Per Gathas policy of giving stranded Inlanders the option of a one-way ticket back home did not extend to children like Diya. Because they were ‘not mature enough to restrain their powers or understand the choice.’ So they were raised in Asha Mayniu by the Per Gathas. This was a tradition, one of those Haaskoning and his Inlander peers couldn’t buck, so nobody thought too hard whether this was because children with these powers could easily bring monsters down on their heads without training... or whether the fact that these wunderkind would be the best of the best magian when they grew up. 

He’d not had too much time to talk to Diya. He didn’t get a sense that she still resented what was virtually a kidnapping back then. Her life was here now, and she was arguably the second most powerful individual in the entire patchwork of the Outlands. She had every right to be outraged by women’s rights in most of these old regions, of course, but the fact of the matter was, even the notorious emperor Galeo the Younger, master of Roma Praetorium, would be on his best behavior around her.

But even she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, use her influence to change anything in the Pariya, despite visibly itching to, and she and Haaskoning had both tacitly approved of his staying out of hot button political issues in Assyria. He wasn’t Per Gathas, but he was a Magian, an Inlander, a perpetual stranger in these lands. As he walked the Path, absently following its twists and bends, Ryou had a lot to think about. 

Night was gathering as they arrived at Mooncrest. Diya said her farewell after walking him to the border of standing stones. Jexen and Aegid, two of the Hounds, had been fishing with make-do equipment near the river. They quickly rolled in their lines, picked up the bridles of three horses, and trotted over to him.

“Lord Ryou, we were waiting for you- Honored one.” Jexen quickly bowed to Diya, who gave an absent nod, patted Ryou’s shoulder and made him promise to visit her again soon and not to forget to boil the water and never eat anything that wasn’t thoroughly cooked. Aegid tried to hide a small fish he’d caught behind his back as if he thought that was criticism directed at him.

His escort got him back to Sura and the Noble quarters by the time the moon had risen in the sky. It’d been noon in Asha Mainyu. He was stuck in the back-end of history yet still managing to suffer from jet-lag. 

Ryou wandered into the round room which was common to the Noble Quarters. “Oh, Peistratos.”

The old servant spun around and gave him a reproachful look. “You aren’t dressed, sir.”

Ryou looked down at his traveling clothes. “What?”

“For the party - have you been to your quarters? I’ve laid out what you need- but you’re still dusty from the road. I will call a slave to bathe you-“

“No, wait.” Ryou rubbed his face - admittedly dirty. Traveling only a few hours in a country like Assyria could get a neat freak like Ryou sweaty, covered in dust from the road, and stinking of horse. But he wasn’t going to have some poor man or woman sluice him down with a sponge, he was going to grab some simple clothes and head to the balneum. Jexen had also mentioned a party, but Ryou had no intention of going, he just wanted to see Darius somewhere quiet for a few minutes, and then go get a bath and perhaps a bite of late dinner in lieu of lunch.

“Lord Ghan is away, sir,” was Peistratos’ objection to that particular plan.

“What? Jexen said he was back. They’ve all been back for three days-“

“At the feast day, sir.” Which you should be attending, was what his arch look at Ryou added. “He’ll be gone most of the night.”

“Yeah, I should be, but crows take it,” said Darius, striding in. He was in his full court regalia. For all of one second. The torque at his neck was tossed on a shelf near the door before he was three steps in and he was tugging at the golden rope holding his hair back. One line of kohl over his left eye was smudged. Peistrasos hobbled forward with alacrity, ready to grab the rest of the gear that was undoubtedly going to go flying right here in the dining hall. 

“You’re late,” Darius bit off, stopping before Ryou and handing off the gold cord to his servant blindly. “I thought you’d be here this morning, I had Hounds watching for you since the sun hit zenith. Where were you? Who the hell is late for his own feast day?”

“My what? Oh, right.” Darius meant his birthday. Sort of. Actually Ryou was turning thirty in eleven days - assuming his grasp of the calendar remained intact after a few trips through the Paths. At the start of the Assyrian year, Darius had taken him to the temple of Ashur, Ryou had explained when his birth date was, and they had told him on which day his feast day celebrating his birth would be. Ryou had said that was a off by a fortnight and he was informed that he was quite wrong. After thirty fruitless minutes, Ryou had given up. Discussing it with Arbi later, he finally come to understand that uncertainty on calendars and birth days meant people were given certain days of religious significance as feast days cum birthdays. The birth days of the nobility were recorded with more care in order to read their astrological signs, but the celebration was still held on the feast day. 

“Fortunately the moon has barely risen - but you court bad luck like she’s the best of mistresses,” Darius grumbled, shaking out his hair. “Come on, we still have time.”

“Time for- wait, where are we going?” Ryou trailed after Darius, feeling rather put out by the entirety of his welcome back. 

“The stables,” Darius informed him over his shoulder.

“The stables? I just got here-“

“Leyam had Semara of Tibes himself draw your signs earlier, he’ll have a scroll for you. And I have a gift of good portent - which you are supposed to receive on your feast day if you wish it to bring you luck, not the day after. Oh, you brought him out, good man.”

Jexen was in the courtyard right outside the noble quarters, holding a horse by its bridle. It wasn’t the rangy mare Ryou had ridden back from Mooncrest, and it wasn’t his quiet gelding, but if you glued the two of them together, you might get close to the mass of this animal. It was black, or else a very dark brown - hard to tell from the flickering light of the torch that Dionosydoros, who’d also shown up, was carrying. 

Darius strode right up to the huge animal and clapped it on the shoulder. The creature looked around with a snort, but didn’t do anything dangerous. Darius took the bridle from Jexen, clicked his tongue and turned the head towards Ryou. “His name is Aangad. That means ‘made of iron’, in the old way of speaking. He’s yours.”

Ryou gaped. “…I…he’s beautiful.” And big. And uncut, he was ready to bet, which made them harder to control, requiring more knowledge in their handling. Um-

Darius clapped the animal on the withers. “He’s powerful, he’s tireless and he’s as steady as the stars.” He smoothed the silky dark coat, and added: “He’s for war.”

Ryou’s repeated thanks died in his mouth as Darius speared him with a complex look. 

Darius looked away first, jerked his chin at his men. “I’ll take him back.”

“Good to have you back, Ryou,” Dio said quickly. He hooked Jexen, a little slower on the uptake, by the arm and took off into the darkness, after planting the torch into the loose gravel and dirt of the courtyard. 

Silence settled. The snort of Aangad, the creak of his body as he moved and looked at the courtyard as if hoping for vegetation, sounded loud. Darius was stroking the wither and frowning at it. Finally he turned towards Ryou.

“I couldn’t come with you to Asha Mayniu. I once said I would, but I-“

“You said you would come only if your duty to Leyam permitted,” Ryou reminded him calmly. 

“Yes. And now I must be off again soon. To the front lines. Are you still willing to come with me?”

For answer, Ryou took a step forward and took the bridle from his lover. He brought his hand up carefully - palm flat out, fingers tight together - without showing signs of tension, even though of course this huge beast could kill him in two or three interesting ways right here in the courtyard. Yes, everything was _fine_. Good boy, good horse. No eating your new master or jumping all over him.

“I’ll have to get used to riding him,” Ryou said bravely. Damned if he was going to stay behind, though. That was already established.

“We’ll get onto that tomorrow.”

Aangad smelled Ryou’s hand, his huge nostrils flaring. It allowed him to pet his muzzle - or maybe it was just blithely ignoring the small human. Ryou was learning to get on well with dogs - kind of had to - and he felt confident he knew where he stood with them, but this horse? Who knew. He didn’t _think_ it was plotting his demise or humiliation, which meant it wasn’t part of the equine cabal that had been persecuting him since his arrival in the Outlands.

He jumped - and Aangad’s ears folded back - when an arm went around his shoulder. Darius stepped near him, eyes still on the magnificent gift. A horse like this was worth more than a house. It might be worth more than the ransom of a small city. A gift of good portent for Ryou’s birthday... if the horse that was going to take him into a war zone could be considered such.

In the dim flicker from the torch and the moonlight, Darius’s eyes, smeared with khol, looked tired and somber. He was still staring at the horse when he squeezed Ryou’s shoulders. “I am glad you’re back. Did you learn anything?”

“Yes, quite a lot,” was all Ryou said. He knew, from the absent way Darius had asked the question, that he wasn’t really looking for information on magian business. 

The night was quiet, even the peacocks were asleep in the nearby garden. Ryou wasn’t a magian right now, and Darius wasn’t Ghan the Beast, eager for combat and bloodshed. Ryou remembered what Darius had been like at Essin, but tonight he seemed quieter, thoughtful. Was this a new facet of his lover? They’d only known each other a little over six months. He could hardly say he knew all about Darius. But Ryou also wondered if the last six months had matured his lover somewhat. It seemed... arrogant and yet seductive, that thought that Ryou had left an imprint on this steel soul that would perhaps stay even if one day Ryou had to leave for good. Darius had certainly changed him, after all. Ryou would carry a part of him from now on, wherever he went and whatever happened. 

“I’m glad to be back,” Ryou said quietly into the hush faintly ridden through with the trill of crickets. He turned towards Darius and their lips met. 

Ryou was suddenly pulled, slowly but inexorably, off to the right by the bridle looped around his wrist until he staggered. 

“This fellow wants his stable,” said Darius with a tolerant smile at the beast which was turning away as if Ryou wasn’t even there. Ryou forced out what he hoped sounded like an indulgent chuckle. Maybe he’d been too hasty in assuming Aangad didn’t have it in for him. 

“Come, let’s walk him back. Unless you are tired? Do you wish to go rest?”

“I am the opposite of tired,” Ryou sighed. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep tonight at all.”

“Hm. I see. Give me a few hours to remedy that,” said Darius, letting his hand trail down Ryou’s back, all the way down to his thighs before taking the bridle from Ryou and leading the way. Ryou smiled faintly in the moonlight and followed.


	4. War Party

Ryou waited out those final minutes in the coldness that followed a dreary dawn, and an entire army waited with him.

A small "fff" drew his attention. At Ryou's side, Darius was blowing in his hands to warm them. His eyes were measuring the faces of the Alliance and Assyrian commanders around him, then he glanced at the troops assembled around the monticule onto which the command tent had been erected. 

Ryou had been rather glad to have avoided the full experience of the siege of Essin, yet here he was in the thick of another battle. He had known this day would arrive for over a month now. He'd expected to be spending this last moment in contemplation of his own mortality and all that might happen before the sun set tonight. Instead, his gaze kept snagging on a shield painted with two green boughs that one of the boys was carrying for his commander, a song going through his mind. It'd been the song the Hounds had chanted on their exit from Sura ten days ago, as they headed towards a battlefield where any one of them might fall. A fast-paced song in an odd half-tone that ran in iteration after iteration; 'In ten years will I return, by the heart of the laurel, in ten years will I return, by the heart of the oak. By the heart of the oak, beloved, beloved, by the heart of the laurel and by the heart of the oak. In nine years will I return, by the heart of the laurel, in nine years will I return, by the heart of the oak...' In Ryou's head, the song counted down again and again as he remembered the children lining the sloping city streets giving the cavalrymen flowers, and the women waving henead hands and cheering in an oddly strident, mirthless way that sounded like the cries of crows.

The command tent’s flaps were thrown aside, making Ryou jump. Four men came out bearing a fifth one on a couch like a stretcher. 

"Aten fuck you sideways, you wimps, let me- hey, Ghan!" Terentius looked up from where he was struggling with a thin cover to see his one-time pupil in the art of war approaching him, Ryou at his heels. "Tell these blackguards to get me off this sick bed and onto a goddamned horse."

"We're on a prominence here, the men can see you just as well if you stand," said Darius with the first effort at diplomacy Ryou had ever seen him make. His hand was firm beneath the General's elbow. The other expatriate Roman, Lucius, was at Terentius's other side. Ryou hovered, looking down at the old man with a troubled heart. Terentius's health had struck him as mediocre back at Essin. That was nine months ago. The old general had lost weight, his veins were blue and tense against white, dry skin. He struggled to get off the couch, gasping for breath for a few seconds. His feet and ankles were swollen, wrapped in linen and felt. Darius's stern expression betrayed nothing, except to those who knew him well, as he helped Terentius to the lip of the small hill to hail his men.

One thing that hadn’t diminished, however, was the old war-horse’s voice. It seemed almost unnatural, that bellow coming from this wasted old man.

“You ugly lot are so dirty, we’ll beat ‘em with our stench alone!”

Not how Ryou would have stared a rousing speech, but the men hollered in appreciation.

“So here it is at last! This is the final hurdle, boys! One more day of fighting and you can all go home and fuck your wives!”

That also got a lot of shouts. 

“This is-” The general interrupted himself and took a steadying breath. Ryou watched the thin cheeks puff in and out, while in his mind ran, 'In one year will I return, by the heart of the laurel...’

“This is where we show the fucking Legion the door! This is where we win! Hail!” He made a fierce gesture with his fist, and held it until the troops cheered. Even Ryou, unfamiliar with antique warfare, knew that speech had been too short.

Ringing cries of "General" and "Victory" echoed all around, but from a large contingent, the acclamations sounded pro forma. These were not the same men who'd been at Essin, because they would have had to march to get here and Essin and this large city were quite far from each other. Only their leaders were the same; the men had come from other places, sometimes marching for months to get here, and the largest battalion was the regular Assyrian army. This was why they had not been at Essin other than Darius's small mobile force. Some of these men had left Assyria's farthest flung provinces almost a whole year ago, a mobilization that had started months before Ryou even landed in the Outlands. First they'd gathered Alliance troops at Dimat, then they'd marched on to Assanur and dispersed the renegade satrap’s army with barely a struggle other than a long series of dogfights. But this was what they'd been aimed at all this time, like an arrow leaving the bow. This was the stronghold and central point of the Roman presence in the Pariya and Doric regions for the past twenty-five years. Here, in the city state of Hellias.

Geographically and strategically speaking, it made sense for Leyam's army rather than Aksum or the main force of the Alliance to attack this spot, despite the considerable distances. It'd have been even further for the others. But that wasn't the point. This was where the Romans were coming from these past decades. This was the birthplace of Cassius Leius, Leyam’s one-time regent, the man who'd sold out Assyria and made it a protectorate. They were attacking the Romans directly here. They were breaking the agreement with Rome, openly rebelling, and they were paying back the Hellian who had enslaved them to Rome in the first place. The Alliance troops were cheering for Terentius, but the Assyrian troops were still waiting. 

Terentius sat back down heavily on his couch, panting as if he’d run a race. Ryou felt a sinking feeling in his stomach as he watched the old soldier. But the man was clinging to his purpose like he was to that short sword of his. This was his accomplishment too. Unfortunately he no longer cut the same figure as before, and he was not the one to get the blood of the Assyrians flowing. He was a stranger to them. He was not the one they were waiting for...

Darius hadn't mentioned Terentius's health once in the past ten days. He was taking what was obviously a terminal illness with typical Outland attitude; inner sadness and outwards acceptance. He did not say anything when they first saw Terentius ten days ago. Darius had received letters from common friends warning him of what he would find when he next saw his mentor. He didn't say anything to Ryou when coming back from the final meeting before the day of the battle, even though Terentius had fallen abruptly asleep in mid-sentence, drooling like an invalid, leaving Lucius and his aide to finish. 

Darius and Ryou had returned to the part of the camp the Hounds had called their own. They'd stopped awhile at the circle of men gathered around Jexen and Kaibaroses, who were playing dice with an intensity that was only matched by the spectators. Darius went to give Dela the Kush the final battle plans and then he dragged Ryou bodily to the tent they shared, passing by Hounds grinning tensely, eyes bright like feral dogs in the reflected fires that spread across the plains. 

The savage roll in the sheets that had followed reminded Ryou of their first time in Essin. Darius was unapologetic about the force, the repeated demands on Ryou's body. There was a sense that Ryou had known what to expect when coming here to be Darius's good luck lay the night before the battle, so he had no reason to complain. Yeah, Ghan the Beast's kind of reasoning. Ryou made sure his lover knew he did not mind; it was part of what he'd accepted months ago, and if nothing else, that relentless stamina certainly provided a distraction from morbid reflections. It was the early hours of the morning before Darius stopped coming back for more, and let a sweat-soaked Ryou curl up beside him and draw out, with quiet words, just what Darius was thinking.

Even then Darius did not mention Terentius's health except tangentially. He just said he didn't think the man would be able to stay mounted. "Terentius atop his horse bellowing at them not to screw up... that’s worth a whole extra unit or two," Darius had said in a low voice as he stared up at the darkness of the tent they shared. "This battle is going to be tough enough."

Tough... They were facing eight thousand Roman troops, all that were in the region, camped near the town. There were almost ten thousand Alliance troops on the opposite side of the field, and they were mostly Assyrian, which improved their unity and inter-army coordination. Math favored Assyria and the Alliance on this one, but math wasn't what was going to do the fighting. Reality wasn't so clearcut. The Roman opponents were well trained, veterans of many battles in this region, and there were one thousand of the dreaded triiari beside them. They were also well rested, and many of them considered Hellias their home, a refuge and last bastion as the furthest reaches of the Empire frittered away. They had everything to gain by standing firm, everything to lose if they didn't. The Assyrians by contrast were far from their country, and there'd been necessary attrition and wear and tear from marching. The odds were even, maybe even a little in the favor of the Romans. And that was where the men's confidence was vital. 

In ten years will I return, by the heart of the laurel, Ryou inwardly sang to himself as the cold and the fear nipped at him. Then he noticed the silence. Terentius was sitting back on his couch, muttering something between gasps. Then a rustling started, a murmur of tension twisting around the thousands upon thousands of men. 

It was cut through by the sound of a trumpet. 

Darius looked up from where he was grasping Terentius's shoulder. He looked relieved. 

From around the command tent came a chariot pulled by two brilliantly white stallions, led forward by the bridle by Rand walking at their side. And there was a noise, small in every throat yet collectively it sounded as if the air had sucked in and suddenly released under the effects of surprise as the men saw their king riding to meet them.

The chariot’s wheels were large, they carried it high off the ground, so Leyam was easily visible to all. He wore a deep blue robe picked out with golden embroidery, and he wore leather armor reinforced with metal panel inserts. A man’s clothes. A king’s clothes. In his hand he carried a spear, the other gripped the chariot’s front. Over his own hair he wore a conical helmet inset with gold and semi-precious stones, circling the moon and half-moon symbol of his royal bloodline. 

Ryou blew his breath out. He'd known it was coming, but still, to actually see it... he snuck a glance at Darius, then at Rand as the chariot drew closer. They were looking at their king, the man they'd protected and killed for, and the raw, fierce pride in his eyes shone like a beacon. 

The effect was striking enough by itself, but this was _Leyam_ , the Bitch King of Assyria. The men were silent, a deep, awestruck silence that waited like a hole for Leyam's first words, waiting with baited breath that measured how serious the situation was when their king had chosen to lead them out to this battlefield, to this city, casting aside the warped image imposed by Hellians in his youth for this battle and for the soldiers who would fight it for him. 

The chariot drew to a halt before the hill. One of the chargers stamped, and then stood still. Leyam looked around. Then he lifted his spear and tipped it casually forward at a twenty degree angle like a pointer.

“Look at it.”

There was a stir among the men. The hill had been well chosen, Leyam was higher than the head of the troops and his voice carried, though Ryou couldn’t imagine everyone here could here him, despite his fine voice rising to the challenge. It wouldn’t matter, his words would sweep out and be repeated by the men.

“Look at the city.”

He was looking over the head of troops, and his spear dipped lower, definitely pointing now.

“Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it elegant?!”

A murmur started. The men were not looking at the city, but it had their attention nonetheless.

“She is a _whore._ ”

That earned a sudden shout, men banging their swords against shields and jeering at the city at their back.

“Many years ago, she put us to sleep and let in our enemy. Many years ago, she murdered _our king_ -“

The yells echoing around threatened to drown out his words and he paused for a few seconds until it fell like the sound of surf drawing back with the tide.

“Murdered our King and took us over. Not just us Assyrians! You! Troops of Aksum! Troops of the Free Cities! Did the Romans do you any favors?”

“No!” 

“No. She betrayed all of us. To them.”

Crude but effective, Ryou thought. Just a few words, but Leyam had used them to draw these common men, these soldiers, into a circle with him, their king, descendant of gods. Shared their humiliation, consolidated them. Ryou knew full well it was deliberate, but he still felt a nervous tingle run up his spine, his hands were warm now and that bloody song had finally left his head. 

“How many of you have had family crucified?” Leyam shouted - quite rhetorically, as every soldier bellowed back and Ryou seriously doubted the Romans had made that many casualties. It didn't matter if it had touched a thousand of these men or hundreds or even just one; if it had touched one, it had touched them all. 

“Now is the time for revenge. Now is the time to paint the whore with the blood of her lover. Now is the time to take back our pride, our reign, and fulfill our oath. Blood for blood!”

An inchoate yell seemed to shake the ground under Ryou’s very feet.

Darius touched him on the arm and gestured him to follow. While Leyam continued to harangue the troops, Darius led them down the slope to a small knot of the Hounds upper cadre. Dio and Dela were waiting for him on horseback, leading Darius's mount while Ryou, with Jexen’s help, clambered onto his own. 

Aangad breathed and huffed beneath Ryou, a movement that rippled beneath Ryou's legs. The morning air was harsh in his lungs, stinking of firepits, spoiled food and excrement. Soon it would smell of smoke and blood. Ryou resisted the urge to pinch himself. What the hell was he doing here...? This wasn’t his war…yet he would not have been able to wait back in Sura for news that Darius had fallen. Besides, more prosaically, there could be interference by the Ancients. Though what they could do against this huge mass of men…Meka-whatever and his ilk, all their little schemes, were powerful drops of poison certainly, but this was a flood, even their power would be lost here.

Darius pulled his horse up to the foot of the hill and joined a small knot of the other unit commanders, also astride their mounts. Not far above their head, Terentius was standing again, without assistance this time. He looked better now than before, an old war horse scenting the wind of battle. 

“Still no cavalry I see,” said Lucius with a grin that showed not the slightest hint of fear as he scrutinized the enemy line half a mile away. 

“I should fucking well hope not,” said Darius. “My men and I spent the last three months busting our humps hunting down every single one of them.”

“You busted our humps too,” said Leodes dryly from the other side. He was the commander of one of the Alliance’s archery battalions from Ambroxes, but he also had a chariot division under his command. He’d been in the region longer than Darius had, one of the first units to reach the edge of the contested region.

“I busted everybody’s hump, it’s what you Greeks call damocracy.”

“Demo-“

The correction was interrupted by blast of trumpets.

"I'm going," said Darius. He didn't reiterate what he'd told Ryou on a nearly daily basis every day for the last fortnight. Ryou knew very well that he was to stick with Leyam and his bodyguards, and escape with them if things turned sour. Ryou nodded anyway, as if Darius had repeated himself yet again. He'd steeled himself for this, he'd run this through his mind a hundred times. 

"I'll see you later," he said firmly. Darius flashed him a brief corner smile, saluted his brother, and then turned towards the edge of the slope, Dio and Dela at his side.

The two forces were meeting outside the city. This was standard for many battles in the Pariya, cities were prizes, not battlegrounds. The Romans wanted a quick victory, they didn't want their land or home savaged by a siege. Also, it had to be said, Ghan had made it very clear that this was not Essin. If the Assyrians had to lay down a siege, the consequences of their eventual victory would be dire: every male of noble Hellian lineage would be flayed, every man of military age would be put to death, and every woman and child would be sold off into slavery after being put to forced labor demolishing the city of Hellias stone by stone. Ryou did not have the courage to ask if Darius would have actually gone through with the threat. In truth his lover might not have had the choice. Though Hellias was the pivot of the ongoing struggle against the Romans, other city states had supported them and might be a fall-back position if they thought they could get away with it, and gain advantages when the Imperium returned. If required, Hellias would have to be an example to the rest of them... Fortunately Ghan the Beast’s reputation meant he did not have to put it to the test, the Hellians believed him. 

So the Romans could not benefit of the few simple fortifications around Hellias. However they had had weeks, if not months, to prepare, and they were firmly encamped. Their position looked unassailable: they’d raised the ground a short distance from the city, creating an artificial mesa from which their archers could fire down half a dozen feet to greater effect. Pikes planed in the ground, wooden fortifications, their camp and supplies in the center. Ryou’s mouth went dry as the rising sun uncovered more and more men, glinted off spear tips and armor and helms. They looked... unconquerable. 

“You’re not seeing it right, Ryou.”

Ryou glanced at Rand in surprise. “What?”

“You’re seeing what the roman general is seeing, actually.” Rand was still holding the bridle of Leyam’s horses. He was staring at the same scene as Ryou was, but he was obviously seeing something different. “Their general is Camillus Atilius Ralla, from the Caspernus region. A good strategist, but not an innovative one, fortunately. You see a massive amount of men in a formation that has defeated armies for a thousand years, with their backs to their home, solidly entrenched.”

Ryou looked hard at the plain before him. Well, yes, that really was what it looked like. He glanced around, tongue darting over his lips. Leyam’s perch in the chariot put him almost at the same height as Ryou on Aangad, he was only ten feet away, and Ryou noticed the king’s eyes flicker towards him as well as if equally looking around for what Rand was seeing, or someone to interpret this vision. It occurred to Ryou that Rand was only addressing him in appearance. He might really be talking to Leyam. Though the Bitch King of Assyria was a terror in a palace, and had in fact brought this entire army together just as much as the generals, he was not actually a military commander. The chariot was for show; Leyam would not, unlike many of his ancestors, ride out ahead of his army and be one of those leading the charge. Like Ryou, he would know the strategy of this morning’s battle intellectually, but now that he was not staring at lines on a map of sand but at real men in real positions that seemed a whole lot more... solid and unmovable and complicated than a strategy session could really prepare him for, he needed assistance. Maybe even reassurance.

But it would not be politic to show this, so it was Ryou who asked the question. “What do you see, Rand?”

“I see a strong man who has been blinded and stuck in lead boots.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Hounds have been haunting this region for months, assisted by Leodes’ chariots. Ghan has burned oat and barley fields - horse feed. It put pressure on the populace too. When the Romans sent out their cavalry to hunt him down, he ambushed them and killed them off unit by unit. In the meantime, troops from nearby Kormen-Amur have stolen or killed every horse they could find, and, ah, some friends of mine have been making sure that there’s nobody around to report army movements to General Camillus Ralla.”

“Aren’t those horses there?” Ryou narrowed his eyes behind his glasses and stared at a darker deployment off to the right. The rising sun was in his eyes - another advantage the Romans had angled for when they’d set up their fortifications on this side of Hellias.

“That’s what’s left of his horse unit, backed up by fast runners. Not enough. In fact they may prove his downfall,” Rand said.

“Oh?”

“General Camillus Ralla thinks this is not a problem. He feels safe where he is. He thinks he can be a rock to withstand the waves.”

“The waves wear down the rock,” said Leyam softly in tone that suggested he was quoting text.

Ryou had some notion of the strategies - though not that much, he hadn’t been there for all the talks. There’d been too many people in that tent already, and when a lot of people talked at once it could cause his Gift to fritz. He knew a bit of what to expect. He knew, for instance, that a fair amount of Assyrians would be dead by mid-morning and he just hoped... Every one of those dead men would be mourned, but was it horrible of him to hope that the men he knew personally and one in particular would not be among their number?

Aangad huffed beneath him. On cue, the trumps rang again.

Ryou had only textbook notions of what warfare was like, and what he did know would not be relevant here. One of the main problems on this battlefield was communication; no radios, only runners. And flags for semaphores, but quite quickly the tramp of feet raised dust that obscured some of the signals, and then they were relying on young men on horseback dashing to and from the command, to relay accurate information to someone managing multiple strategies at once, get a correct order back to the correct person who had probably moved to a different part of the field, or possibly died in the meantime. 

It was a horrid feeling; because the Assyrian plan hinged entirely on a complex multi layered strategy and it was crucial that it work out like clockwork or they were all dead. 

Which was why it was good the giant had been blinded and put in boots, Ryou realized. There were fumbles - he could tell from panicked voices and counter-orders from the knot of commanders around Terentius, rising over the noise of battle - but the Romans did not take advantage of it as they should. They were in the perfect defensive position, after all.

The Roman general must have been cock-a-hoop to start with. Two waves of Assyrians probed the ranks, got countered by triarii, and men died. A cavalry unit (Ryou’s heart squeezed) made a light probe to the left flank and got one man out of four brought down by arrows. They retreated quickly. But the main Assyrian troops were still in several knots. And on the far side, toiling forward slowly by the pull of oxen, some large, heavy carriages were being dragged forward. 

Flags started waving like mad over the Roman army. 

Rand, hands shielding his eyes from the sun like he was using binoculars, made a small tsk sound.

General Camillus Ralla was a sound strategist, and he’d been at other battles against Alliance forces before. He knew what those oxen were pulling forward, even though their burdens were masked by large crates. The Assyrians had brought their canons.

But they’d made a mistake, Ralla must have realized. They’d pulled them up on the right flank, and somewhat far from the mounted archery units as their bang would cause Assyrian horses to bolt just the same as Romans. The right flank was where what was left of the Roman cavalry was. Still very dangerous, an obvious targets for canons, their natural enemies. 

A plume of dust rose, heading east...

“Is that-” Leyam eyes flickered. He was supposed to be in complete control.

“What’s going on?” Ryou asked loudly in Rand’s direction (not just for Leyam’s benefit, he couldn’t figure out what was going on either, and he had no idea how Rand knew what was happening.)

“The Roman cavalry are attacking Keitos’s outpost,” said Rand. “The 1st and 2nd legion are marching behind them, so that the mounted archers can’t assist, and give the cavalry support.”

Ryou’s hands tightened on the reins.

The right side of the battlefield was not yet veiled in dust, the wind blowing towards the west, so he could see the Roman cavalry and troops attack the guard around the oxen and the cannons.

“How soon until they find out they’re fake?” Ryou asked tightly.

“Not soon enough,” was all Rand said in answer.

Blast of trumpets and even from so far away, wild baying howls. A cavalry unit burst out from among the ranks of the staid Assyrian archers. Three large dogs could just be seen at the lead of the newly formed unit, rushing ahead of a large brown horse and rider.

Ryou found himself praying. He was a complete atheist, there was nobody to pray too, but for humans feeling so helpless, it was an instinct. Please god let him be alright-

Darius cut the Roman cavalry to pieces. He left the straggling Roman troops to the infantry units who had given up the pretense of guarding the empty boxes, and were charging instead. The Hounds bypassed that, dove into the weakened flank to harass the triarii, along with archers hitting the center of the Roman formations. Another squadron of heavy horsemen followed the Hounds and hit the triarii as well, no longer protected by pikemen the Hounds had taken out. 

The formation shifted - and another unit of Hounds appeared from the other side near Hellias. They cleaved through the distracted flank of the enemy, not stopping for anything until they swooped into camp. They set fire to the Roman’s supplies before fleeing again. Without cavalry of his own, Ralla couldn’t respond fast enough to the nipping of the Hounds at his heels. 

At that point smoke added to dust and even Rand couldn’t make much out. He left the chariot’s bridle in the hand of another bodyguard and scrambled up the hill to the command ten. Terentius, beaming and as spry as a goat, was up on a stool held by his aide as he tried to make out the battle, listening to runners and barking orders.

Leyam and Ryou remained where they were.

“Kind of leaves us feeling decorative, doesn’t it,” said Leyam after awhile.

“Yes...”

“You’re making sure...”

It was a testament to how out of his element Leyam was that he asked the question and that he let it trail off.

“Yes, I’m keeping an eye open for anything strange,” Ryou said softly, then had to repeat himself as Leyam visibly hadn’t heard over the noise. ‘The noise’, Ryou caught himself thinking, like it was an inconvenience, while in that thunderous avalanche of sound, a good part would be from men screaming in pain or dying...

Smoke drifted over them, making Ryou’s nose sting. 

For one whole hour he remained on tenterhooks, a horrible time as he could no longer see or understand anything, other than Rand’s quick reports. 

According to Rand, the Romans had fallen back further and retrenched. They’d thought they’d drawn first blood initially. The reversal and the loss of two triarii units had shaken them, as had the appearance of the Beast of Assyria on the battlefield.

In the end, despite the horrible visibility, a coordinated strategy won out. Rand’s reports came back faster and faster. The clever passing from archery to light cavalry to heavy cavalry and infantry and back again was leaving the Romans on uneven footing. Darius hitting their back flank wasn’t causing much damage in itself, but fear was pushing them to back away from him - and then they were hitting their own spikes. A moment of tension as it was reported that, at the rate they were going, the Assyrian archery would be out of arrows; all their supplies of same, brought painfully over a heartbreaking number of miles, would be expended. But then came the grimly heartening news that the Romans were running out even faster; their supplies were burning and Hellias was now cut off from them, unless the city made a very determined sortie and that was unlikely in the face of the threats they received.. Once they lost their archery...

A familiar figure galloped up to them, to Ryou’s immense relief. 

“Everything going well back here?” Darius shouted - his ears were probably ringing from battle noise.

“Yes-“

“Good.” Darius plucked a standard from the hill and tossed it to Bareil behind him. 

“Are you having fun, brother?” asked Leyam suavely for the benefit of those around them.

“Yeah, s’like cutting loaves into slices,” said Darius with a wolfish grin and then he galloped off again.

The standard was visible for awhile over the dust and smoke, it seemed to be plowing right into the Roman ranks. 

Ryou was left this his useless prayers and his anxious watch. 

Rhapsodes, warriors and historians would go on and on about the victorious battle of Hellias for years to come, and Ryou would be forced to recount what he remembered, and add more as he embellished from what he was told later (this was expected). But what he remembered from that day, on an immediate visceral level, was the growing stomach ache as the tension and fear soured in his middle and made him hurt from his groin to his throat, for hours even after the trumps of victory had rung out, and he and Leyam had been escorted to a site overseeing the city to revel in the new conquest.

 

\---

 

For the wise decision of having ditched their own defenders, Hellias had been declared a safe city, and its new satrap had groveled on the floor before Leyam for an appropriate amount of time. The troops had been unleashed on the remains of the large Roman camp for their loot and their casual vandalism, as well as the murder of any triarii they found who wasn’t protected by one of their commanders (regular roman troops were mostly safe, local troops recruited into the army even more so, though the former could look forward to a long period of enslavement if they did not have rich families to buy their freedom). In the distance, Ryou saw dead bodies get carted away towards charnel fires- but Darius quickly dragged him away, towards the glitter of victory and away from the grimness of what it’d entailed. 

The heads of the Alliance forces were now in a large roman mansion that’d been built on the outskirts, halfway to the river. The group filling the large courtyard was composed of the generals and commanders, the elite Alliance troops, those men who had distinguished themselves in battle and a few inebriated soldiers who'd wandered in and were drinking themselves into a cheerful stupor in the corners of house and garden. 

"Lift your cup," Leyam ordered. "To the General whose strategy led us to triumph! Terentius Varro! Hail victory!"

Cheers. Terentius, looking ten times better than he had this morning, waved from his seat and pumped his fist in the air. His face was pink and healthy again, his thin body vibrated with energy, he was almost back to his frame at Essin.

"To our brave Alliance allies, who have been fighting tooth and nail these past twelveyears and more. To Aksum, the Ionian states and to Kormen-Amur. Hail victory!"

“Hail!”

“And one last man I want you to acclaim, my friends,” said Leyam. “He tormented you all like a Deva for years, but you will drink to him now, as he has given us this day along with many others.”

“Oh give me a break," Darius snorted softly, disengaging his arm from Ryou's waist and getting to his feet as Leyam turned and beckoned him forward.

"Hail the Beast of Assyria," Leyam said, his fine voice rolling out over the clapping men. "Hail your king's brother, Darius Par Sirrian! Hail victory!"

Abortive cheers stuttered to a stunned halt followed by an amazed murmur.

Darius's hand stayed half-raised in salute as he stared, frozen in shock, at his brother squeezing his shoulder and mugging for the crowd.

The hullabaloo the dozen Hounds made would have raised the roof if they'd not already been outside, a wild, proud clamor as their commander was publicly recognized as the king's own blood. The cheers were infectious, they swept the assembly of Assyrians who knew damn well just how much this meant. Darius responded to the hails with a gesture that looked automatic. 

Ryou wormed his way through the excited throng. Everyone was on their feet, crowding around the king and his brother, but Rand was always easy to find due to his height.

"Uh..." Ryou realized he wasn't sure how to say this... but Rand knew about culture gaps too. "Is he allowed to do that? Leyam, I mean. It's great, but..."

Rand smiled faintly. Ryou thought the man's eyes looked nostalgic, maybe even a little troubled as they rested on Ryou's face. "He is King. A man can declare a bastard to be his son and give him his name, and the king has all and every right any man might have, and more. It's official."

"Wow. I think I'm as stunned as Darius. This... this will mean a lot to him." Darius was over there, giving well-wishers a kind of 'yeah, yeah' wave of his hand while he said a few words to Leyam, rather acid words by the look on his face. Leyam smiled angelically with obvious delight at his surprise. But beneath Darius's exasperation with his crazy brother, Ryou could see it start to sink in, the way a jagged, private smile was growing on his lover's face, a fierce pride. 

"Yes. For starters, it means he's third in line for the throne, behind Nirar and Cassin," Rand said dryly. "At least until Leyam has more sons." 

"Of course," Ryou said, stunned once again. Darius had been within reach of the throne ten minutes ago too, but not officially, which meant that he would have faced considerable struggles and would have required allies and compromises to keep his power. Now there was nothing but a straight line and three other lives... Ryou wondered if that would occur to his lover at any point of the evening. He wouldn't be surprised if it did not; Darius was really not interested in that kind of power. He'd lived on the wrong side of the sheet every day of his twenty six years until now, the politics would be foreign to him still, but what was immediate was that name, which recognized him in the eyes of the world as the son of the father he admired so much. Ryou realized he was clapping too, along with others who were still cheering and raising a ruckus. Like Darius, he did not care for crowns and honor and such – in fact, his feelings were quite ambivalent about the obligations that were now sure to come with them, and what they would mean for his lover and himself. Yet he still clapped, because he was one of the three men in this entire assembly who knew just how much this would really mean to Darius.

Darius was not one to be swamped by courtiers for very long. One minute later he was going through them with his usual stride and approaching Ryou.

"Congratulations," Ryou said, and got a 'not you too' eyeroll that did a mediocre job of hiding the brightness in his lover's gaze. 

"Did you know about this?" Darius growled at Rand, reaching without looking for a cup a slave was holding up on a tray. 

"Yes, but my King swore me to silence," Rand said dryly. 

"Yeah, he would, that,” Darius muttered something in his cup, drank half of it, then pulled Ryou against him. "What are you two standing around like posts for? This is a party! More wine here, gods blind you useless cup-bearers! More wine!”

 

\---

His arm was still looped around Ryou's shoulder five hours later, not leaning against Ryou for help, no, though Ryou was rather glad to be able to make sure his drunken lover was heading in the right direction and back towards their tent. 

Ryou was privileged to witness a whole army with a hangover the next day as he went out to tend to Aangad. He rejoined Darius for an early lunch, a happier affair than breakfast with Darius over the worst of the aftereffects. Ryou teased him, since he would not often have this opportunity; Darius could normally swim in beer and watered wine without any problems. 

“Excuse me.”

Darius and Ryou looked up from their lamb stew and fruit. 

"Ei, Rand, what are you doing hanging around at the entrance like a maid? Come in, have some beer.”

Rand stayed where he was, hands slipped into his belt. His face was unreadable. 

“What?” asked Darius sharply.

“I'm sorry, Darius, to be the bearer of ill news,” said Rand soberly. “General Quintus Terentius Varro died this morning."


	5. Funeral Party

The light rain cleared up before the procession started mid-morning, but now a brisk wind was blowing, making the torches crackle and carrying the ululating cries of the dozens of professional mourners up towards the sky.

Participants were still filing into the necropolis. The royalty was there already, surrounded by honor guards. Leyam was wearing a Greek ensemble, almost sober for the occasion, in that new style of his. King Ka was standing next to him; smaller than Leyam, dressed in armor piped with gold and red paint. His dark face was expressionless as he talked to Leyam in a low voice, not that Ryou, twenty meters away, would have been able to hear him over the noise of the procession. Listening in on Leyam’s other side was Dal-Burnas, the leader of this Free City region. They had left its municipal center, Kasside, almost an hour ago to come here, to Kasside’s dark and usually silent twin, the city where their dead resided. Other leaders and kings - and one queen as well - stood around them; from fair Hellens to dark-skinned neighbors of Aksum, from republican leaders to absolute monarchs, they were all here to honor their general. Darius had said that not even Galleo the Older had had that many crowns attending his funeral. But the Roman emperor Galleo the Older had plundered and enslaved other countries. Terentius had liberated them. 

Away from the dignitaries, three people stood against a backdrop of friends and relatives, next to the mourners waving their arms and rending their clothes and pulling their hair. A fair-haired woman in her thirties, a gangling girl of about fourteen and a boy of six. The woman was looking at the ground, as far as Ryou could tell; she had a veil drawn over her face, and her eyes looked tired and dull. The boy was holding the older girl’s hand, but his sister, standing with a hard and set expression beyond her years, appeared not to notice. She took after Terentius, Ryou realized, seeing in her face an echo of what the general must have looked like when young; not very pretty, thin and gangly, but with a look of stubborn pride. She was staring straight ahead at a squat shape like a ziggurat, as high as three men, at the center of the necropolis. The top was concave like a bowl to hold the masses of oil-soaked timber layered with sweet sandalwood. The bier atop the wood was shaped to look like a chariot bedecked in ribbons. The figure lying inside it was draped with a deep red cloth pipped in gold. 

Darius paused a step. He and Ryou were not part of the immediate family and not part of the royal assembly, though Darius could theoretically be included in that lot now. Ryou had felt no surprise when Darius joined him earlier to walk with him, however, and he felt no surprise now when Darius made his way towards Terentius’ family and stood with the group of personal friends at their back. They’d saluted the widow earlier. Darius had met her before. Sessalia, her name was, her daughter was Nikomé and her son Spariat. Or the daughter was named Numeria Terentius Varro and the son Quintus Terentius Varro Sessalianus. Or a combination thereof, or a name that seemed to come out of left field and make no sense at all. Fortunately the glorious melting pot that was the Pariya had made customary to the point of reflex the addition of ‘daughter of the general’ and other qualifiers that made people with different traditions - and poor confused Japanese businessmen - able to grasp who was being talked about.

Terentius had other children. Probably grandchildren at that. But they’d left him over twenty years ago to return to Roma Praetorium, denouncing all ties with him after Terentius refused an order to sack a town in occupied territory he’d lived in for ten years. Darius had started to tell Ryou a bit about Terentius’ life on their way here, but had stopped shortly after he’d started with, “Well, it’s complicated.” Ryou had a feeling it was. What mattered in final were this family here; the marriage of his sunset years, the descendants he’d had with his new Hellenic wife in one of the Free Cities he’d liberated, the children who were stoic now but who’s reddened puffy eyes showed that they had mourned him, ever since the news had spread through the Pariya three days ago. General Terentius Varro was dead.

Ryou wondered if that other far off family had heard. If they cared. 

General Terentius Varro was dead. The Liberator had died as the last city was freed. It was seen as a sign. Though strife could still re-ignite in theory, both enemies and allies seemed to believe that this omen was a sure mark that the war was over. 

There were people all about the necropolis now. Five slaves were pulling a life-size statue of a horse - a rather nice piece - up the promontory towards the priest, who was wielding a hammer and a sour look on his face. Or maybe Ryou was imagining it, it was quite some distance away. This mess of customs and regions that were the Pariya led to a lot of variety in funeral rites, but most priests were used to sacrificing live animals - and getting a portion of the meat sent to the temple. But Terentius had made his wishes known years ago to his friends and family, namely, “Damned if I’m having anyone cut the throat of one of my horses - or any other for that matter - just to give me a send-off. Find something else!” This was apparently the compromise either he or his friends and family had chosen. A small half-smile threatened to haunt Ryou’s face, automatically repressed in view of the solemnity of the event as well as habit. All this...this ceremony was important, essential even to show who and what Terentius had represented, but inwardly Ryou would always remember the cantankerous old pragmatist, the military genius hidden within an elderly body and deliberately abrupt behavior. It was how the old soldier would like to be remembered, he was sure.

“Excuse me, sir.”

Ryou looked around. Dionosydoros was behind him, looking grumpy. "Yes?"

"That rag-boy over there says he has a message for you."

"For me? Are you sure?" Ryou looked beyond Dio, who’d been following some of the other officers in the last part of the procession. A scrawny youth was looking at Ryou dully from the spot where he stood next to Dela. 

"Says so. He says someone went to his master's office - his master is a scribe and courier in Kassides. Says this man gave them a message for you on this piece of... vellum, I guess. But I can't read it, it's not Latin for all it looks like it."

Stunned, Ryou reached for the small rectangular piece of cardboard. It was Haaskoning's business card... He flipped it over. In a neat script and in English were the words: 'Such a concentration of important people gathered in one place will be tempting to anyone who wishes to destabilize this region.'

Ryou felt cold prickles run up and down his spine as he glanced around at Leyam, King Ka and others gathered around in a group. Oh my god...

“What?” Darius asked sharply. His eyes went from Ryou’s face to focus on the card. “Is that-“

“It’s Haas-“

“Shh!” Darius glanced around, then looped an arm over Ryou’s shoulders and pulled him close. “What does he want? What’s he even doing here? The Sons shouldn’t be anywhere near a necropolis, especially today.” Cremation was anathema to followers of Zaratusra, and though Haaskoning probably didn’t believe in that, his troops, almost all of them from the Outland, did.

“He thinks someone- the Ancients, I imagine - are going to try to strike here, now,” Ryou whispered, nodding his head fractionally towards the left.

Darius stared at the assembled heads of state, and his brother in particular. “Fuck.” He let go of Ryou and started elbowing his way through the crowd towards the enclave where the royals stood, protected by guards who would be completely ineffectual against what might be coming. Ryou followed in his wake, putting up a hand to protect his eyes from dust and sand blown high by the rising wind.

Ryou tripped and staggered forward- he thought he’d stepped into a shallow depression for a split second, but that did not explain the strange shaking sensation in his knees. And it did not explain why the people around him had shouted in surprise, some windmilling their arms as if-

A large _crack_ sounded, like a nearby lighting strike, and the ground started to vibrate. Earthquake!

Ryou’s Tokyo dweller instincts took in the crypts around them. Fortunately all were low and very solid looking, nothing likely to topple on them, no glass to fly around, no gas explosions possible- but if the crowd panicked, that would not be good.

Tremors still ran through the ground, fainter but still present. It felt like a subway train rushing right underneath their feet. The sky was speckled with birds panicking and shrieking and being plucked and tossed around by the wind. Ryou quickly staggered away from the group and reached Darius, looking around in alarm.

“It’s a-” Ryou bit his tongue accidentally. The ground had lurched again sideways. 

And it was suddenly cold. Colder than the howling wind could explain. 

Ryou glanced around. A plume of smoke was rising from somewhere to the north. It was rising fast - too fast for smoke from a simple fire. Then the top started to arc and fray. The sky was darkening, the sun had almost vanished as if the clouds were thickening at an impossible rate. 

“What-” Ryou flinched and brought his hands up to his ears before he could finish the question.

The wind screamed, the people in the procession cried out, the oxen that’d pulled the bier bellowed- yet Ryou could hear a babble of voices that seemed to cut through all of that background noise as if he had earphones on, catching far-flung radio stations. He couldn’t make out what they were saying though, they were too garbled.

“Definitely some kind of attack,” he bit off. Darius, he realized, was steadying him. 

“My brother?” he asked tightly.

Ryou glanced that way. Rand, who had as far as Ryou had known not been invited to a funeral with royalty, was standing next to Leyam, and another man who Ryou recognized as a bodyguard was as well. The royal assembly was rife with soldiers and guards. They didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger.

Ryou could not distinguish the voices he was hearing all that well, but he could tell there was an edge of panic to them.

“What- what is that? Is there a fire over there?” Darius asked sharply, eyes on the odd column. It was so straight though, like a very slim pillar. A pillar which the eye was unable to estimate the height of, because it wasn’t clear how far away it was, but it looked absolutely massive. The top of it was frittering away, giving the impression of smoke or-

....A...water jet...?

...But...it was too - it was _insanely_ high! And where did it come from?

“Everybody remain calm.”

Ryou would have obeyed that order with great relief if it hadn’t come from somewhere within his right ear, or so it seemed. He yelped and scrabbled at his head.

“What?!” Darius roared at him over the noise.

“Carusen, Medena,” snapped the voice. “Take your units and scan the area. Don’t worry about the breach yet, find who is responsible.”

Ryou tried to convince his heart to start beating again. That had been Haaskoning’s voice. 

The babble of voices faded, and Ryou heard a brisk “Yes, Blessed One.” 

Ryou glanced around. The procession was either on their knees, sheltering around mausoleums, or stampeding towards the exit. He and Darius were in an empty space not far from the royal enclave, nobody was going to trample them or attack them in the physical sense. So Ryou closed his eyes and lifted his magian senses to a plane a mere thought away. Then it made sense. 

There had to be two dozen of the Per Gathas around, more than he’d ever seen together outside of Asha Mainyu. They were far away, other than one who was about a fifty feet to the left. Ryou opened his eyes briefly and saw nobody there, but he had a feeling whoever it was was just outside the walls of the necropolis. 

Where other humans were scurries of fog in the higher dimensions, magians were distinct presences. He was feeling them move around, and hearing them too. It seemed some notion of distance still existed in this higher plane, or else he didn’t know how to fine-tune his senses to circumvent that; that was why he could barely make out most of the voices, they were too far away. But Haaskoning was there. Oh boy was he there. His presence, his power, towering over the others in Ryou’s mind, and his voice clear and loud. 

“Haaskoning, what is going on?” Ryou asked tightly, not sure if his voice would carry. Zabessa had not taught him this kind of communication.

The huge massive pressure of Haaskoning’s presence increased. ”...Ryou? Are you and the others safe?”

“I...guess? Are we under attack?”

“Yes-”

“The curse of The Flood,” one of the babbles suddenly became clearer, a thread of panic in the voice.

“What?”

There was a feeling of agitation, Haaskoning’s attention drifted. Then he spoke to Ryou, quick and tidy.

“One of the Ancients has created a breach about a kilometer away from your present position. It’s a breach between this plane and the Inlands. Specifically, to somewhere deep in the ocean. The water is jetting through.”

Water... jetting... through?

Ryou’s mouth went dry as he stared at the column. “They can do that?”

“Yes. But nobody has dared to do this before.” Ryou had the sudden impression that this was the equivalent of starting off a war with an H-bomb. A line that nobody in their sane mind would cross. 

“You can’t help with this,” Haaskoning said (needlessly, Ryou knew ‘helpless’ when he saw it). “I will deal with the breach. Diya and Andrap are trying to re-divert the water, but some flooding is inevitable. This could also be a distraction from another attack. Please protect the assembly in case anything else is aimed specifically at them - but don’t tell them what’s going on.”

“What?!” Ryou’s voice cracked.

“What?!” hissed Darius, a second away from grabbing Ryou by the shoulders and shaking the explanation of what was happening out of him.

“We have to tell them-” The words died in Ryou’s throat. Tell them what? He could tell them ancient Egyptians were trying to kill them all by opening breaches into the Inland oceans. And then what? Get out of the way of the stampede? Where would they stampede to? Kassides was notoriously flat, and they didn’t tend to build high buildings in the Pariya. How high would the water rise? Panic was heavy in the air, and anything he could say would only add to it. He knew Haaskoning was mainly thinking of the overall stability of the entire Outlands - he was its shepherd after all. However, saying nothing at all was too shortsighted. 

“Ryou,” Darius ground out, half a threat half a plea.

“The Ancients have- have put a hole- they’re bringing through a ton of water. Uh, a ton is a massive understatement. They’re trying to drown this whole region. Haaskoning doesn’t want us to tell anyone.”

“He _what?!_ ”

“He’s right”

“Huh?!”

“The truth would be pointless- and we have to think about the future of this war. We have to do something for now and for later.” In the game of Go as in the rest of life, as his father the president of Ujie Standards and Co would say, if you only react to opponent’s move, you’ve already lost, you just haven’t thrown in your stones yet.

Darius looked at him as if he were crazy.

Ryou glanced once more at the column in the sky. The air felt as heavy as if a massive thunderstorm was brewing, increasingly humid too. Better get used to that. 

“We have to do _something!_ ”

“That’s what I said. I-” Ryou tensed when he saw movement - deliberate movement, not panicked running. Not an attack though. “What is she doing? 

Darius glanced over his shoulder to see what Ryou had spotted.

Nikomé’s robe was muddy, she’d apparently fallen, and her hair was out of its braided coiffe. She looked like a waif and walked like a warrior. She’d grabbed a torch from one of the bearers and was marching to the monticule with her eyes fixed on her father’s pyre.

“She needs to take shelter- we all need to take shelter, break open the crypts - or better yet, get on top of them...” Ryou’s voice sounded powerless against the enormity of events, against what was going to come soon, and against that fourteen year old girl’s determined effort to give her father a proper ritual. 

“Ryou, if worse comes to worse, can you try getting Leyam and Ka out of there? As many of the others as well?”

“What are you going to do?” Ryou asked sharply.

“Not much I can do about-” Darius made a gesture at the sky. Then he walked off towards the monticule. He didn’t wait for Ryou’s answer. Whatever Ryou could or couldn’t do, Darius wouldn’t’ be able to help with that either.

Ryou stared at his lover’s back, and Nikomé starting up the stairs, at the pyre outlined against the sky with insanity as a backdrop. Terentius... Terentius the Traitor, his family would call him, but his daughter was going to be sure that he’d be buried in honor come hell or high water (the last being a virtual certainty).

Ryou passed Darius at a dead run. “Come on!”

“Huh?”

He reached the girl in ten steps. She glared back at him as if expecting an enemy.

“Keep going!” Ryou barked at her. “Darius, give her a hand.”

“Come on, child, keep walking,” Darius said stolidly.

Ryou raised his hands to his mouth like a bull horn and shouted. “Listen to me!”

He’d been paying attention to the battle of the Per Gathas, their voices echoing through a plane of higher dimensions. He’d forgotten that in the real world, the wind was howling and people praying out loud.

His mind darted towards the nearest magian. “You!”

“Huh?!”

“Tell me how I can make them hear me!”

“What?!”

“ _Now! _”__

__“Er- er-“_ _

__Upper dimensional space pinched and twisted in his senses in demonstration. It felt faintly familiar, echoes of what Haaskoning had used to talk to them all, and it reminded Ryou of an Ancient talking to him anywhere in a dimensional shell..._ _

__“Got it.”_ _

__“But what-“_ _

__“ _Listen to me!_ ”_ _

__The air still thundered and the ground still shook, but everybody with ears abruptly shut up. Even the crazed oxen._ _

__Ryou waved his arms wildly. He was halfway up the promontory. Eyes started fixing on him._ _

__“It’s Aten’s revenge!” He could hear himself shouting, and also tiny strange echoes sparking all over the necropolis as his voice carried unnaturally through higher space to cause the air to vibrate in the three dimensional world._ _

__Leyam was staring at him, Ryou could see him behind Rand. Ryou caught the king’s bewildered glance, hoping Leyam could bring his assemblage to listen with his charisma and control, and also for moral support. Leyam specialized in the brightest gaudiest of lies to adorn a hard naked truth. Ryou was about to tell a whopper._ _

__“Terentius the Traitor, his own people call him. For twenty years they have prayed for his death. And now Aten is reaching out to take him away. He freed you all. He broke Aten’s shrines and temples. The Roman God wants revenge!”_ _

__Most everybody was staring at him. A lot of people with the look of “who the hell is _that_ and how is he doing that?” on their face, but they were listening._ _

__“You and Terentius fought the Romans on the ground. Now it’s up to your gods to fight Aten on their own battleground.”_ _

__Voices were starting up again...but not the panic._ _

__I did it, thought Ryou. He’d positioned this in a context they could understand - even if it was superstitious nonsense. But it sounded like a lot of the tales the rahpsodes sang in Leyam’s halls. Wars between nations were often echoed in the heavens. It made sense, it gave them a narrative and a side to root for, and also the impression that they were probably not aimed at specifically. This was the biggest lie of all, but if it kept them from panicking..._ _

__Was it even a complete lie? The Ancients had counted on the Roman army to do their work for them, conquer this area and open it to their predations. Terentius and the men and women assembled here had stopped them even if they did not know of their existence. This was a strike against them, and it was also certainly a form of revenge, and really, the only out-and-out lie Ryou had told was to blame poor Aten - who’d overall been a fairly peaceful god from what he’d learned about the original religion - instead of the parasites that had cored out his religion from the inside and wore his banner like a mask while despising him the while._ _

__Ryou ran up the monticule. Darius and Nikomé were reciting something the wind was mostly snatching away. The torch in her hand whipped so badly he thought it’d gone out, before the pitch and cloth caught again._ _

__Ryou turned away and grabbed the officiating priest, who hadn’t fled along with most of the other celebrants. “You! Don’t just stand there! Your gods are fighting for Terentius’ soul!”_ _

__“His- his _what?!_ ”_ _

__Oh right, they didn’t really have that notion here. “They’re fighting... they’re just fighting, okay?! Will you trust that Inder and the Pariya pantheons can beat Aten, or are you going to stand there staring?!”_ _

__The priest was a barrel-chested man in impressive robes with a long rich beard. This stunned air was probably very foreign to him, though really one couldn’t blame him..._ _

__Then he drew in a breath, let it out. Shrugged off Ryou’s hands and looked about._ _

__“EGAN! ACRISIUS!”_ _

__If Ryou had had that volume, he’d have not needed magian tricks._ _

__“Set to right the incense burners! Light fires! Somebody catch those oxen and bring them- over there! NOW!” He started down the promontory in direction of the royal dignitaries. A wisp of wind brought a mutter to Ryou, sounded like, “I _knew_ we should have used a real horse”. _ _

__Ryou turned towards the pyre, trusting the priest to put up a good show with whatever he could gather to hand. This was good. It’d keep people focused, give them impression of control. Leyam, Ka and those who were not elected leaders were also religious figures, for the most part, they could even participate. It’d keep everybody calm, and really, at this point it couldn’t hurt. It might even help. The Outlands were not as solid as the Inlands when it came to the effects of the human mind. Healing orisons offered results, so could mass prayer. Maybe it’d keep them safe._ _

__Ryou stumbled as he was suddenly drenched. People all over the necropolis screamed or cried out. It hadn’t been rain, more a solid splash of water as if he’d been the target of a giant bucket. Shit. _Shit!__ _

__The babble of the Per Gathas voices sounded tense, but nobody was screaming to run for the hills, so hopefully this was just spillover, most of the water was still - hopefully! - being diverted into another dimension. Otherwise they would likely be crushed, or at least seriously injured, by tons of water suddenly falling from a stunning height upon their heads._ _

__Ryou staggered up to Darius, shivering from the shock and from the cold._ _

__Nikomé’s face was pinched and furious, and she looked like she was fighting back tears. The drench of water had put out the torch beyond the ability for pitch and cloth to recover. Darius was at the side of the monticule, looking around for a flame that hadn’t been put out._ _

__Nikomé’s burning eyes fixed on Ryou. “Do something!” she ordered, her voice wobbling._ _

__Right, this he could actually do something about. ”Here, bring it here.”_ _

__She thrust the torch at him without hesitation, almost hitting him in the face with it. It was wet but still warm. Not sopping, fortunately. Ryou concentrated, Zabessa’s lessons in mind._ _

__The higher dimension felt as fractured and messy as the current one, this Flood was creating a lot of spatial displacement and stress. But what Ryou wanted to do was fairly simple, a trick a lot of beginner magian knew, even those hedge wizards who were too weak for either the Per Gathas or the Ancients to worry about._ _

__The torch was as consistent as a shadow in the higher plane - not that any 3-d explanation could work here anyway. Ryou concentrated on the evanescent thing and poked it with his mind, as if creating a small rift. A truly proficient magian could split the torch in half just by looking at it. Though as Darius and others would point out, so could a sword, and that was less likely to bring down the furies on one’s head. Ryou didn’t want to break anything, just connected a few areas of the torch _here_ to _there_. Perfectly useless in itself - the torch itself wouldn’t even notice, had if feelings; like the Broken Lands, it considered itself whole even if now Ryou could have stuck a straw through certain sections. But the advantage of doing this maneuver abruptly was that it created an electrostatic imbalance between two areas on the surface and- _zap!__ _

__The torch burst into flame, spitting and crackling and throwing off sparks. Niko screamed and flinched away but did not drop it. They should teach her strategy and get her to take her father’s place in the army._ _

__The fire was... not quite right. Ryou had goofed and introduced some element from the higher spheres to the behavior of the flames, or more likely the wood of the torch. He really should take the time to practice more. The fire climbed and squirmed over the torch as much as it burned, and it dripped to the ground like phosphorus, but the rags and pitch were on fire, and they’d set the oil-drenched pyre alight._ _

__Ryou turned his attention that way next. Once more, he knew how to do this. He created a slice in the air above the wood pile, a thin section that led to elsewhere. It was a weak kind of connection, anything much larger than drops of water would have disrupted it, but it sufficed. Water splattered down around them, but when it reached that section, invisible to the naked eye, it vanished as if sucked in._ _

__There was a crash behind them. They spun around._ _

__Darius put down the hammer. “Huh, good craftsmanship. I thought it was made of stone.” He turned away from the wreck of the sacrificial horse, which had been carefully fired and polished clay it seemed. “Go ahead, Nikomé.”_ _

__Nikomé squared her thin shoulders, chin jutting out, and stabbed the torch into the pyre like she was trying to execute it._ _

__For a heartbeat, Ryou thought the wood was too wet- then the oil caught with crackling hisses._ _

__Nikomé straightened and her eyes finally rested on the figure in the bier. She looked upset, but was obviously trying to hold it together. Darius saluted with his sword as the wood caught further and the wet cloth over the body started to smolder at the edges._ _

__The ground shuddered. The three of them tensed. Ryou felt movement beyond the range of his senses, and focused his eyes to the flume._ _

__“Look.”_ _

__It only lasted a few seconds, but it was an extraordinary sight. The column of water teetered and sank, while it vanished up from the bottom as if pulling itself up by its bootstraps. It looked like a snake large enough to devour a city - later some would call it a dragon, in the rhapsode tales - but it was now eating itself, spinning down and falling into a smaller and smaller space until it vanished all together._ _

__Ryou’s hands instinctively flew out and grabbed Nikomé’s thin shoulders a second before a massive blast of wind thundered past them, almost shoving them into the pyre. Air compensating for the sudden removal of such a large mass. Far above, the clouds that had been buttressed with the humidity, crackled and rumbled with lightning. But overall, the noise levels had dropped. In the sudden of the relative quiet, the flames, nearly blown out, took hold again. They crackled, and a piece of wood hissed and sang as Terentius finally took his leave._ _

__

__\---_ _

__

__It was raining as Ryou and Darius made their way to the dais where the royals had now assembled. Ryou didn’t know if it was genuine rain or water lingering from the flood. He didn’t have the courage to taste it to see if it was salty. Kassides was going to have problems with its agriculture if a lot of water had made it through._ _

__“Ah, my brothers!” Leyam said brightly, turning towards them. He saluted Darius, slid an easy arm around Ryou-_ _

__“What happened? _Quick._ ” Leyam’s eyes were hard above the brassy smile._ _

__“Ancients. It’s fixed. Per Gathas don’t want anyone to know.”_ _

__Leyam said something that would suit a bordello owner better than a monarch, but the smile was still in place as he spun towards the assemblage, arm still around Ryou, free hand thrown up for effect._ _

__“Aten! Truly, His mother must be cross-eyed!” (An expression that meant, Ryou knew, that the god of the entire Roman Empire was a notorious cheater at dice.)_ _

__Some of the assembly flinched, others were still trembling. But to be royalty in the Outlands meant that bodyguards, food-tasters and a small army were simply reasonable precautions to take on an everyday basis. Most of these men and women had lived with assassination like a sword of Damocles over their heads since the crown had reached them, especially in the past twenty years of political instability. Ka looked positively bored with matters at hand, almost certainly a mask, but as exquisitely crafted as Leyam’s. The King’s eyes drifted over Ryou to focus on Leyam, and he was about to speak, but unfortunately some elderly ruler Ryou was not familiar with diverted attention before Ka could._ _

__“Who is _that?!_ ”_ _

__Leyam’s arm squeezed Ryou’s shoulders as everyone focused on him. “Ah, my loud-voiced friend here. He is a visitor from a distant land, and my brother’s closest companion.”_ _

__Lovely. What Ryou had always wanted. To be outed in front of two dozen royal houses right after a disaster of world-ending amplitude. There was no-one in the Pariya who did not know what ‘closest companion’ stood for. Of course, there was no-one in the Pariya who gave a damn either. Ryou’s recoil was entirely from ingrained cultural reflex._ _

__The reference to ‘distant land’ was also code. Most people here knew he was an Inlander already, or would as soon as they could catch up with the rumor mill._ _

__“Is he a priest?” the garrulous noble asked._ _

__Leyam’s kholed eyes narrowed, but he paused as if measuring the ebb and shift in the audience like a fine-tuned instrument, and then leaned his head ever so slightly towards Ryou._ _

__“No,” Ryou said firmly - three people flinched back when he opened his mouth as if they expected to be blown away by the sound of his voice. “I am a scholar.”_ _

__That explained absolutely nothing, but it sure sounded good._ _

__Ryou hated this, he hated lying, he hated being the center of attention, he hated having to put on a show, but needs must._ _

__“I am a student of mysteries.” Ryou spoke slowly, it gave him an air of wisdom, of ponderous confidence, and allowed his mind to race ahead over what he’d learned from Darius, Leyam and Haaskoning about the political quagmire he was skirting. “I have visited Asha Mayniu and studied in the great library. I have traveled the Outlands. I’ve seen many things.”_ _

__At that point Ryou ran out. He’d established his position in relation to the Per Gathas - not one of them, but tolerated - but what did he say now? He could no longer count the eyes on him. He-_ _

__“Terentius,” Leyam said under his breath with barely a movement of his painted mouth._ _

__“Today I am here to honor General Terentius,” Ryou said. A bead of sweat trickled down his back beneath the woolen tunic he wore, brocaded and decorated. But his face was that of the Ice Prince Ujie Ryou. He owed his father for that at least._ _

__“As are we all!” Leyam gracefully picked up the pass. His arm disappeared around Ryou and he moved forward three steps, presence like a beacon, catching all attention. “For two dozen years has _our_ general lead us across the waters of war into freedom. Now he has crossed the waters of the river of the dead to safer shores.”_ _

__Ryou stood stone-still, face impassive, as attention left him slowly and fixed on Leyam. Two men made a move to come up to Ryou, either to question him or to try to see if they could hire or badger a powerful magian who seemed unattached to the Per Gathas. They looked at a spot over his shoulder and then changed their mind. Ryou didn’t know what expression Darius had shot them, but he could guess._ _

__Leyam was talking with his beautiful, clear voice, a trifle more solemn than his usual tone in deference to the occasion. He was constructing a narrative to link the ‘defeat of Aten above’ with the trouncing of the Romans below. There was mud on the bottom of Leyam’s robe, Ryou realized dully. For some reason that made very real the danger they had all been in. He didn’t think anyone else had noticed. Leyam was magnificent, capturing all attention._ _

__Ryou finally allowed himself to relax a fraction and watched the performance with the rest of the audience. Leyam was dressed in sober Greek dress in a style that was not well defined, neither entirely male nor female. The wig he wore was coiffed shorter than he was wont, more soberly. It was a style that was hard to categorize, clashing rather than androgynous. Ryou had wondered several times today if this was a transition back to female dress, a movement towards male, or just a new stage of Leyam._ _

__...Ryou had talked a bit with Leyam on the voyage to Kassides, after the triumph at Helias. But only a bit. There were not one but two cultural barriers between Ryou and the words he could have said, encouragement in regards to the search of gender identity, or simply identity (he didn’t think Leyam had any confusion about gender per se.) Ryou had stiltedly said generalities about genderism and labels - sounding like a well-meaning but embarrassed school councilor to his own ears - before talking about genderless trends. Leyam had listened with fascinated interest, taking none of it on board on a personal level unless he hid it particularly well. It occurred to Ryou, watching the King - his friend, Darius’s brother - perform, that Ryou had been trying to assure Leyam that he was not an abnormality, that back Inland he would surely have found a group to identify with, somewhere in the patchwork of multiculturalism. But that’d perhaps been the wrong way of thinking about it. Knowing he had a niche, that he wasn’t alone, was perhaps not at all what Leyam was after. Leyam, Ryuou judged, would have absolutely no problem at all being unique, and was perhaps feeling safest in isolation, a barrier of inscrutability around him._ _

__Leyam moved forward among the notables, and Ryou moved subtly back, stepping completely out of the limelight. Eventually he and Darius were walking along the paths of the necropolis, mud catching and clinging to their sandals. It was humid and cold, and Ryou shivered. Behind them, the pyre burned, fed with wood and oil by a frightened-looking attendant. It would stay alight until midnight, then the ashes would be collected for internment by the family in a private ceremony. Darius did not look back._ _

__“Do we need to get Leyam out of there?” he asked, castling a look around._ _

__“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Haaskoning would have said something if they were still all in danger.” Ryou felt exhausted. “Talking of which, he asked me to come.”_ _

__“Who did?”_ _

__“Haaskoning. We’ve been in communication. He said to meet him beyond the necropolis. Andrap is waiting to guide us.”_ _

__Darius made a dissatisfied hmf sound, but no outright protest. The royal heads would soon be making their way back to the city’s royal palace and the banquet the leader Dal-Burnas had prepared, and Darius would rather go tromp through mud towards an unknown destination full of magian than find himself in the midst of a court feast._ _

__“Lord Ghan. Lord Ryou.” Andrap’s deep voice greeted them along with a bow right outside the gates. He led the way around the stone walls without further ado. His expression was guarded, but there was something grim about his demeanor, the bend of his neck, the way he walked. Ryou focused away form the glittering nobles he’d left behind, and on the matter at hand._ _

__Andrap led them across the plains of Kassides, through fields, over stiles, past a frantic goat-herder, eyes as round and bright as marbles, trying to get his panicking animals into a semblance of a cohesive flock again. The sky was still empty of birds, and nearby a dog was baying with barely a pause for breath. A sweep of water dusted them as they walked, but up ahead a break in the clouds finally let through a trickle of sunshine._ _

__The walls of the necropolis were still visible behind them when Ryou spotted a small knot of people up ahead. They were standing around a low stone wall that separated a field of flax from a field of what Ryou thought was barley. A lot of the stalks were flattened or askew._ _

__Ryou counted a dozen or so magian, most with the wheel and the wings symbol of the Per Gathas on their brown habits. A couple dressed like common folk might have been undercover in the procession. Most of them looked exhausted and very worried. They formed a loose semi-circle, bracketing a respectful empty space of a dozen meters around a small round figure perched on the stone wall. Andrap stopped as if he’d hit an invisible barrier, but he motioned Ryou forward._ _

__Haaskoning twisted on himself and looked over his shoulder as they approached. “Ah, he is here,” he said. His eyes paused briefly over Darius but he didn’t comment._ _

__From the other side of the low stone wall, a hand popped up and blindly waved. “Hello, Ryou.” Diya’s voice. She must be sitting on the ground and leaning against the support. She sounded odd, as if her throat was scratchy after a lot of yelling, but her tone was still energetic and positive._ _

__“Is it safe now?” Ryou asked as he drew near._ _

__Haaskoning nodded slowly. He looked like he was exhausted but could not afford to show it before the troops. “The breach is sealed.”_ _

__“There’s damage,” Darius grunted, sounding factual rather than condemning as he propped his hands on the stone wall and looked out at the fields beyond, which would now more accurately be called a marsh. A saltmarsh thousands of miles from any ocean. Ryou measured with his eyes, but he was not a strategist or an architect or a farmer, he couldn’t tell at a glance how many acres had been drowned. Kassides might be looking at a lean winter, though at the end of summer they might make money off the salt scraped and sifted from the ground._ _

__“Did you know this would happen?” Darius asked, turning his head towards Haaskoning - then he stiffened and leaned forward. “What is _that?_ ”_ _

__“No, we did not. Not this.” Haaskonnig did not follow Darius’s gaze. He was staring straight ahead at the new marshes._ _

__“But you suspected they’d try something, so you made sure you were here in force,” Ryou said, filling in the blanks. He walked to Haaskoning’s other side to see what had riveted Darius’s attention. It looked like a pile of rags and dark wood some half dozen meters away._ _

__“Yes. Fortunately. It is possible they thought we would not come near to a cremation, or else they thought we could not stop the Flood. Or they did not care.” I don’t know how the enemy thinks anymore, sounded clear in the subtext to Ryou, who was aware of Haaskoning’s concerns on that score._ _

__Ryou leaned over the wall. “Are you alright, Diya?”_ _

__“Oh, I’m fine,” Diya said with a grin on her round face, as if this was how she’d choose to spend her afternoon, given the option. “I was expecting worse, as a matter of fact. But they did _that_ and then they were gone.”_ _

__She’d gestured at the clothes and the wood. Ryou looked that way again-_ _

__Like an optical illusion resolving into a different picture, what he was seeing jumped out at him. It was a man dressed in what had once been a white kaftan, now stained and muddy. The man’s flesh was a splotched brown and black, and his limbs had been... twisted was not the right word. Ryou was staring at an arm that had gripped over the body’s abdomen, and the limb was curved into a semi-circle, as if the radius and ulna had been malleable and bent into that shape before setting again. The skull was flattened and stretched like a rubber mask exposed to heat. Ryou licked his lips and looked back at Haaskoning._ _

__“What’s left of our mutual acquaintance. Menkaperreseneb.”_ _

__Ryou’s head whipped around, and he stared. On Haaskoning’s other side, Darius leaned over abruptly to scrutinize the pile of remains._ _

__“Doesn’t look like him.”_ _

__“The ‘him’ you met wasn’t really him. This is his body, of sorts, once extracted-... it’s complicated.”_ _

__“They brought his corpse here?” Ryou asked, trying to puzzle that one out. This thing did look like a weatherbeaten mummy that’d been unwrapped and left to rot._ _

__There was a pause. Haaskoning was still staring out across the marsh. “No, he was still alive on arrival.”_ _

__Ryou opened his mouth to ask if he’d already been like _that_ or if something happened afterwards, and wasn’t sure he knew what to do with the answer if he got one, or if he cared all that much when all was said and done. He remembered what the Ancient had done to Darius, what he’d forced Ryou to do to Darius in turn._ _

__“What happened?”_ _

__“Hm. Well. Some powers are too great for even the Ancients to use, for any human body and mind. The effort it took to do this-“ a vague gesture towards the silver surface spotting a few stretches of muddy land sprawling before them, “- finished him off. A swan song, if you will.”_ _

__“A swan song?!” Diya made a crude noise in her throat. “Not what I’d call it, Casper. More a ‘throw the world on my pyre’ effort.”_ _

__“True.”_ _

__“This... what they did, that was bad, I take it?” Ryou asked._ _

__“The curse of the flood? Yes. It’s bad,” Haaskoning said duly._ _

__“They had to kill one of their own to do it,” Diya cut in, “and we lost nobody to stop it. The worst we’ve had on our side was a nosebleed.”_ _

__“Because there was dozens of you,” Darius said, eyes still on the corpse._ _

__“There’s a dozen of us to one of them _anyway_ ,” Diya informed him tartly, craning her neck to look up at him. “The Per Gathas have the numbers on those- those- bastards.”_ _

__“But not always in the same place.” For Darius, three quarters of the art of warfare was about getting troops together at the right time to make a difference - an effort often hampered by the rules of the Sons (and Daughters) of Zaratusra._ _

__“It’s a large escalation of the conflict, too.” That’s what worried Ryou more._ _

__Haaskoning hmmed, then he shook himself. “No, perhaps not. I agree with Lord Ghan, that we were fortunate to have numbers on our side today. But the fact that the others did not stay here to protect the caster, or the breach, or try anything else... I’m- I believe this is a, how can you say-“_ _

__“Hit and run tactics?” Darius suggested._ _

__“More like a dirty bomb,” Ryou said quietly. He and Haaskoning shared a quick glance._ _

__“Yes. But the attack was opportunistic,” Haaskoning said firmly. “At the end of the day, they can attack the Pariya, but they cannot hold it, not without Roman troops. I heard what you said during the attack,” he added. “Well done.” His train of thoughts sounded disjointed, but Ryou followed them. If the heads of state had been slaughtered, or at least forced to flee before a disaster of biblical proportions that had destroyed one of their city-states, it might have just been enough to turn the tide, stop the last retreat of the Roman army on the outside of the Pariya, or given the more rebellious regions fuel to carry on the struggle against the centralized authority of the large empires like Aksum and Assyria._ _

__The Per Gathas had parried the actual blow, and Ryou, with Leyam’s help, had built a narrative to cushion the psychological impact, now and in case of future attacks. However bizarre, strikes by the Ancients would now be seen as mystical battles, deadly and frightening, true, but no more than a plague or an earthquake or other signs of divine wrath. The temples would make a fortune off any further attempts to destabilize the region, that was all._ _

__“I think they will quieten down now,” Haaskoning added. “Roma Praetorium will turn its attention to its other provinces, and to the Barbarian Lands. They cannot afford to linger in this defeat. The Ancients will try to consolidate their hold on those lands too.”_ _

__“And we’ll make sure they don’t,” said the voice from below the stone wall. She sounded full of fire still._ _

__“Yes, battles for another day.” Haaskoning sighed. “But the Pariya now is a lost cause to the Ancients, at least for a few decades. They should not attempt to ruin it further, not when it will cost them manpower they cannot afford.”_ _

__“Hm. Right.” Ryou crossed his arms over his rich brocade tunic. “Wasn’t that what you thought last time too? That you’d be able to destroy Menka-something and that this would-“_ _

__“Yes, yes,” said Haaskoning testily. Diya looked up at him and put a comforting hand on her husband’s ankle, making Ryou regret being quite so outspoken. Even if he’d been perfectly right._ _

__A loud squawk made them jump. A raven had hopped up on the stone wall twenty meters away and was expressing its dissatisfaction with the morning’s events, feathers all ruffled._ _

__“Want me to come back with a few men and dispose of that?” Darius asked with his usual air of solid practicality, gesturing towards the remains._ _

__“No, thank you, Lord Ghan, we will take care of it.” Haaskoning slipped down from the stone wall and turned towards them, once more calm and confident. “Be assured, and bear my words to your King. This-“ a gesture at the marsh “- will not happen to Sura next. We will take steps, but Diya is right, they don’t have the numbers to make this sacrifice each time.”_ _

__“I’ll relay that to Leyam,” said Darius with a curt nod._ _

__“Thank you.” Haskooning looked over Ryou’s shoulder at the plains of Kassides and the city, neat and tidy beyond it. He smiled. “I believe that finally the Pariya will see some peace, for the first time in many years.”_ _

__“Peace,” said Darius as if he remembered reading the word somewhere, once, in his childhood. “Right. Sounds boring. I’m sure we’ll have other problems to sort out. But hopefully none of those.” He hooked a chin towards the nascent salt-water lake. “Come on, Ryou, we’ll walk back as slowly as we can, and then the company will be so drunk they won’t notice us coming in and leaving again.”_ _

__“Leyam wanted you to stay for the whole feast,” Ryou said, waving his farewell at Haaskoning and Diya. “Being royalty, you’re expected to attend.”_ _

__“Hmf. Peace,” muttered Darius apropos of nothing, and led the way back to the city._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, it's a weird feeling seeing an arc ten years in the making come to fruition. Thank you for all the comments! I felt very unsure about a lot of aspects of some of these chapters, but having so many encouragements really did help ^__^
> 
> The next arc is shorter, and I'm feeling a lot more positive about it. Unfortunately, there is a very good chance that my family and I will be moving 10,500 km away from our present location sometime in the next 2 months (voluntarily, because we wanted one last great adventure before we settled down and because yes, we are clinically insane.) You can imagine that my free time has just gone up in smoke. I will try to get the next arc out before I leave, as well as start a SPN fic I've been working on. If not, then it should be coming out sometime in August/September later this year, as at that point I will have more free time when my head stops spinning.


End file.
